


i & love & you

by tinyinkstainedbird



Category: Impractical Jokers
Genre: F/M, Gen, Heavy Drinking, Old Flames, Pre-Impractical Jokers, slow burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-05-20 18:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14899797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyinkstainedbird/pseuds/tinyinkstainedbird
Summary: It's a few years before Impractical Jokers, and Sal is a bartender on Staten Island. Every day is the same: he serves drinks to Q until last call, goes home and watches comedies, then sleeps his days away -- until one busy night when unfinished business from his past comes home and walks through the door.





	1. well, i'll be damned; here comes your ghost again

_November 1999_

 

“Who the fuck are all these people?” Q demanded, enough of a slur in his voice that everything he said made Sal laugh. “Staten Island’s supposed to be the Forgotten Borough.”

“Not at Thanksgiving,” Sal replied as he cast a slightly overwhelmed look across the crowded bar. “Everyone remembers us at Thanksgiving.”

“Ah yes,” Q said, raising his glass. “At Thanksgiving we’re the redheaded stepchild of New York City.”

Sal laughed as he wiped down the bar where Q had sloshed his seventh beer. “Is that so?”

“ _Yeah,”_ Q insisted in his incredulous philosopher voice. “No one _wants_ to come home and visit us but they _have_ to because their mom says so. Whiskey please.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Sal told him, flipping his towel over his shoulder and putting his hands on his hips as he looked at his drunk friend with stern apprehension. “Mallory’s going to kill you if you come home like this, you idiot.”

Eyes locked on his, Q flicked his empty shot glass closer to Sal.

“All right,” Sal sighed, and poured the shot of whiskey. Sometimes he fought Q on this, sometimes he didn’t bother. Ever since Sal had gotten this job, Q had been a regular fixture on this stool at the bar, where he spent most of the night making Sal laugh and the rest making him sad. Their twenties hadn’t been kind to his friend, but at least this way Sal knew where he was. “I’m not giving you any more fucking peanuts though.”

“You’re a villain,” Q said with a wink before he knocked back his shot. “Oh hey. Speaking of redheaded stepchildren.”

“What?” Sal demanded, giving Q a baffled look as he wandered over to take a patron’s order. He poured the jack and splashed in the coke and slid it across the bar to the drunk frat boy, nodding his sarcastic thanks when he left a dime as a tip. He went back to Q. “What are you talking about?”

“O’MALLEY!” Q bellowed, standing up and knocking his stool askew. “I haven’t seen this son of a bitch in years. GRIFF! Over here, buddy!”

Sal’s eyes scanned the bar and fell on a tall ginger loping across the room to crash into Q, the very sight of it sending them all back five years to high school.

Griffin O’Malley was as redheaded as they came, but he and his siblings were all full-blood. He came from pure Irish Catholic stock, his parents a big fan of the pull-out method as a form of contraceptive, made evident by the fact that they had seven goddamn children, all girls except for Griffin. He’d gone to school with Q and Sal at an all-boys’ Catholic school, which he always said was a nice break from all the estrogen at home. And as if a kid named Griffin O’Malley with six sisters couldn’t reinforce the Irish stereotype any more, he’d practically been born with a bottle of Guinness in his hand. In high school, the O’Malley house was the place to be. It was Griffin’s bathroom Sal had puked all over after getting drunk for the first time, Griffin’s basement he’d had his first kiss in, and it was Griffin’s father’s roast beef and mashed potato dinner Sal had pulled out of the fridge and eaten while high on edibles (his own father had gotten a call about that one). Griffin O’Malley was synonymous with fun. And judging by how drunk he was now, nothing had changed.

“It’s been fucking forever, man!” Q told him, releasing him from a bear hug. “What are you up to?”

Griffin’s grin was still as cheeky as ever. “Oh, you know, a lot of this,” he said, miming jerking off. “Got a job at a fish market in the Bronx, so as you can imagine, I have tons of girlfriends. Couldn’t decide on just one to bring home for Thanksgiving so that’s why I’m here with my sisters tonight. ”

“Hey man, I love fish,” Q said, giving him another hug. “Pull up a seat, I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Still a peach, Quinn,” Griffin told him, perching on the stool next to Q, and then lit up when he saw it was Sal on the other side of the bar. “Sally! Look at you!”

“Hey Griffin,” Sal said, trying to measure what level of tipsy he was. “What’s your poison?”

“Whatever Brian’s having,” Griffin said, settling in happily. “Jesus, it’s good to see you guys are still friends. You were two peas in a pod in high school.”

Q smiled at Sal. “Who, this asshole?”

“Fuck you,” Sal smiled back at Q.

“Nothing’s changed,” Griffin laughed.

Sal passed a Guinness and a shot of whiskey across the bar to Griffin. “Which sisters?”

Griffin took a slug off his beer. “What?”

“Which sisters are you here with?”

“Oh,” Griffin replied. “The little ones.”

“Excuse the fuck out of me,” a little redhead demanded, sidling up next to Griffin, who was unmistakably her brother. “I’m still your big sister, you stupid sasquatch.”

“Ellie!” Q cheered, his welcome for Ellie O’Malley as warm as it had been for Griffin. She went to Q’s open arms and hugged him, and Sal smiled to see she was more or less exactly how he remembered her: small and round and happy with a laugh that punched you right in the heart. She was older than them by two years, and usually served as their designated driver, so she’d seen them all at their worst and still managed to harbour some affection for them. She was the kind of girl you were always glad to see.

“Hey Ellie,” Sal said, waving when she grinned delightedly at him. “I’d come hug you but they’ve got me shackled back here.”

“Weird, I’m not used to you being the one serving drinks,” Ellie told him, matching his dorky wave with one of her own. “Most of my memories from Griffin’s parties are of you on the floor.”

“Mine too,” Sal laughed. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Just a coke if you could, I’m DD,” she said. “Gotta cart these idiots around.”

“Where’s our other idiot?” Griffin asked, leaning around his sister to look around the bar.

“Probably terrorizing orphans,” Ellie replied.

Sal barely heard them, too busy pouring Ellie’s drink and keeping an eye on Q and musing about how silly it was that “What is Love” by Haddaway was playing and thinking maybe he should watch _Night at the Roxbury_ when he got home tonight and deciding to be nice and put a lime in Ellie’s coke before he slid it over to her because he remembered that was how she liked it. And she deserved something extra if she had to spend the first night of her Thanksgiving weekend carting around idiots --

“There’s our idiot,” Griffin said, cutting into Sal’s thoughts and pulling him back to the situation in front of him.

The situation being none other than Tatum O’Malley, rolling her eyes like it was her job and she was the best in town. Sal’s heart stopped.

“Quinn, I don’t know if you ever met my little sister,” Griffin said, presenting Tatum like he was Vanna White and Tatum was the grumpiest prize package ever.

“Yeah, Tatum, of course I remember,” Q said, picking up on Tatum’s mood and opting to shake her hand instead of hugging her. “Last time I saw you, you were crying because the New Kids on the Block broke up.”

Griffin cackled and Ellie’s heart melted as she put an arm around her little sister. “You took that so hard!” Ellie said. “You were very difficult to share a room with for awhile.”

“She was 16!” Griffin exclaimed. “It was ridiculous!”

“Pardon me for loving things, asshole,” Tatum replied dryly.

“So stupid,” Griffin said, and then looked at Sal, who hadn’t said a peep since Tatum had shown up. “Hey Sal, you ever meet Tatum?”

Sal stared at her, a deer in headlights, while she arched an eyebrow back at him in a way that said _I fucking dare you._ It had been years since he’d seen her, and with everyone staring at him, he didn’t know what to say. _Sorry?_ Or _sometimes I miss you_ and _it’s okay that you hate me,_ or maybe the thing he meant most: _I hope everyone you’ve met since me has been kind to you_. He should probably just start with hello.

“Idiot,” he blurted instead.

“Oh ho ho ho,” Tatum brayed, putting her hands up in surrender and backing away. “Goodbye.”

Q booed Sal while Tatum’s brother and sister laughed, mostly out of confusion, but neither took her seriously. Tatum frowned at them and said, “I’m going to find a table.”

Sal leaned across the bar. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that, that was really stupid,” he babbled. “Do you want a drink? On the house?”

“I’ll order it from the waitress,” she said, plucked the lime from Ellie’s coke, and left to find a table on the other side of the bar.

“Hmm,” Ellie said, giving Sal a look he’d never seen from her before, before she elbowed her brother. “Coming, Griff?”

“Nah, I wanna catch up with Quinn,” Griffin said, knocking his pint glass against Q’s. “Closer to the drinks this way too.”

“Okay, well, take it easy, will you?” Ellie asked. “I promised Colleen I’d pick her up at 11 at Bootleg’s, so don’t get so drunk Tatum has to carry you out of here.”

Griffin was already pretty sloppy, but he tried to hide that fact from his older sister as he slugged her on the shoulder and promised he was fine.

“Keep an eye on him?” Ellie asked Sal, inching closer backwards in Tatum’s direction.

“Got it,” Sal told her, because he didn’t know how busy it was about to get.

“Thanks.” Ellie smiled at him before she turned away. “And Sal?”

“Yeah?”

“Call my sister an idiot again and I’ll snap your idiot neck.”

Sal grimaced but gave her an apologetic nod. “Got it.”

+

Before the New Kids on the Block had broken her heart, there was Sal Vulcano.

It wasn’t something Tatum thought about anymore, except when anyone tried to get close to her (especially the ones who tried to get closer to her by making her laugh). It had been six years since that lapse in judgement, and she was twenty-two now, and she didn’t care. Maybe sometimes when she had too much to drink at parties, she’d wind up talking about him to strangers, but that didn’t count. She didn’t go to many parties.

“What was that?” Ellie asked, sitting down beside Tatum on the same side of the booth, instead of across from her, like a normal person would. “Since when do you not jump at the opportunity to sass someone back?”

“I’m not about to get into it with some bartender I don’t even know,” Tatum scoffed. “I mean, normally I would be happy to paint the walls with him, but I don’t get to see you very often, so I decided I didn’t have time to waste on a random dickhead.”

“He’s not a random dickhead,” Ellie said. “He’s not even a dickhead. That was Sal Vulcano. He went to Farrell with Griffin. You don’t remember him?”

Tatum smiled before she could stop herself. “Vaguely,” she said, then aimed her smile up at the waitress who stopped by their table, and ordered a pint of Blue Moon and a large plate of nachos. She avoided eye contact with Ellie when the waitress left. “I’ll share my nachos with you if you get off my dick.”

“I assure you I was never on it,” Ellie replied. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

“What lady?”

“You, lady.”

“About what?”

“Oh my God. Sal.”

“Who? Hal? I don’t know a Hal.”

“I’ll strangle you, Tatum.”

“Wouldn’t be an O’Malley Thanksgiving without some friendly fratricide,” Tatum said, giving her older sister a charming smile that said _drop it._

But older sisters don’t take hints, and Tatum should’ve known that by now, especially since she had five of them. “You should have told me,” Ellie said, taking a chance, as well as a sip of her coke.

Tatum shrugged. “It wasn’t the end of the world.”

Ellie didn’t say anything; she never had to. She had a way of looking at you that made you spill your heart.

So Tatum sighed and took a sip of her sister’s drink and said, “It just kinda felt like it at the time.”

Casting a look across the bar at Sal, who now had his hands full with a giant lineup, Ellie could hardly imagine him being anyone’s apocalypse. She remembered him funny and eager-to-please, as happy to laugh as he was to entertain, always sweet and polite and maybe even a little neurotic. When Griffin had a party, Ellie had always made sure Tatum was out of the house, sleeping over at a friend’s (because God knows their parents didn’t care) so she didn’t know how their paths would’ve even crossed. But now that she thought of it, out of everyone, sweet, funny Sal Vulcano would’ve been Ellie's first pick for her sweet, funny Tatum.

“Well,” Ellie said, turning back to her sister. “You know what they always say.”

Tatum smiled. “What do they always say?”

“The best form of revenge is having a gosh darn blast with your super hip big sister in front of the guy who broke your heart.”

“Well, in that case, count me in,” Tatum said, then thanked the waitress, who had returned with her beer. She clinked her glass against Ellie’s and lied, “But he didn’t break my heart.”

+

Thank God for Thanksgiving. Normally Sal hated busy nights like this, because he was easily overwhelmed and also because his feet hurt, but if it weren’t for the holiday and all the college students who’d come home to visit their families and get drunk with their high school friends, he’d be stuck remembering what it was like to watch Tatum O’Malley laugh from across the room.

It was him and his cousin working the bar tonight, and somehow the two of them managed to avoid crashing into each other as they tackled the ten o’clock rush. He didn’t have time to babysit Q and Griffin and he didn’t have time to think about silly high school bullshit. Maybe there was a song or two that came on and tried to send him back in time to memories of her treehouse and that crackling radio and their summer, and maybe he had to ask a couple of people to repeat their drink orders, but that didn’t mean anything. He kept busy and he kept his eyes off her.

As hard as he tried not to, he still caught glimpses of her red hair when she got up to dance with her sister, and when Ace of Base started playing, he couldn’t help but notice her light up the same as she always had over “The Sign.” But everyone probably noticed that, so that didn’t mean anything either.

He didn’t, however, notice until there was a break in customers around midnight that, all of a sudden, she was sitting at the bar. When he looked over and saw her perched on a stool next to her brother, Sal nearly dropped the glass he was holding.

Tatum noticed. “Nice catch, spilly hands.”

Sal took that as an invitation. He swallowed hard and wandered over. “Hey, O’Malley.”

“Vulcano.”

Her cheeks were pink, just like when they were in high school and they snuck beer into the treehouse. It had never taken much for her to get tipsy, and her flush was always her giveaway. “How many’s that?” he asked, gesturing to her mostly-empty pint glass. “Judging by the rosy cheeks, I’d guess two.”

Tatum finished her drink. “Three.”

Sal grinned. “Look at you.”

She kept her expression neutral. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

“I’m doing it,” he said. “Where did Ellie go?”

A sour look crossed over her face. “She left to pick up our other sister at another bar.”

“She still doesn’t mind being designated driver all the time?”

“Not really,” Tatum said. “She likes picking the music.”

“So, uh,” Sal said, trying unsuccessfully not to get his hopes up about anyone’s motivations for being here. “Why didn’t she take you with her?”

Tatum jerked a thumb next to her at her drunk brother, who was now passionately belting along to Oasis with Q. “Griffin didn’t want to leave.”

“Ah,” Sal said. “So you still get stuck babysitting your big brother, huh?”

“Excuse me?”

“Back in the day, I remember you were always the one cleaning up his messes,” Sal said, and then, despite his nerves, dropped a gentle smile on her. “Of which he had many.”

“You really want to start talking about _back in the day,_ Sal?”

Sal flipped his hand towel over his shoulder. “I mean, I would,” he said. “If you wanted to, I would.”

“Why would I want to?”

Apparently there was at least one thing Sal had forgotten about Tatum: how goddamn intimidating she was. She was scrappy as fuck, pure Staten Island and the youngest of seven, and she’d always had to fight not only for what she wanted but also for what she needed. Tatum wasn’t afraid of anything -- or at least nothing that Sal had ever seen evidence of. And he’d always found that more than a little scary.

“Because --” He shrugged, offering up a helpless smile. “You’re mad at me?”

Tatum smiled. “Am I?”

He laughed nervously. “I feel like you’re giving me a test here and I’m failing miserably.”

“You failed it a long time ago,” she told him.

“Yeah, I figured that out when I was 17,” he said. “I never knew what the hell happened, though.”

“I have to pee,” she said. “And you have customers.”

Sal looked down the bar, where a short line was forming. “My cousin’s got it,” he said. “Do you want a drink?”

“No, I don’t,” she said, slipping off her bar stool. “And stop serving them to my brother.”

Sal glanced at Griffin and Q, now engaged in a very serious heart-to-heart, both of them swaying. “Okay,” he told her, knowing he’d catch hell from them when they asked for their next drink. “I'll cut them off.”

“Thanks,” Tatum muttered, and slung her purse over her shoulder.

“Hey, O’Malley?”

Tatum turned around, exasperated. “I gotta _pee,_ Vulcano.”

He smiled. He couldn’t help it. Her adorable annoyance in his hometown accent just got to him. “I’m off in fifteen,” he said. “You wanna go for a drink after?”

Her expression softened, but only for a second. Then she shook her head. "My memory's not as short as yours, Sal," she said, and walked away, disappearing into the girls’ bathroom.

+

Tatum stood at the sink, wishing she would have given at least one fuck about her appearance before she’d left her apartment tonight. Then she wished she didn’t give a fuck about giving a fuck. Ridiculous. She dug through her purse for something resembling lip gloss or even some chapstick, and then gave up, pissed off.

This was horse shit. Sal was right about one thing: she was still stuck on big brother babysitting duty. She was Griffin's little sister, the only one he had, and yet it was always her goddamn job to look after him instead of the other way around, her job to make sure he didn’t screw up. And when he did, it was her job to cover for him. She was so mad she wanted to leave him here and let him fend for himself.

The little moron would just end up sleeping in a dumpster or getting murdered. Tatum scowled, her bad mood catastrophic, and pulled her hair back to see if she’d look any more human with a ponytail. Nope. Now she was mad at Ellie for leaving her here alone with him. She was mad at everyone, Griffin, Ellie, their parents, Sal, and why couldn’t she at least carry a hairbrush in her bag? She wanted to go home. She’d pull Griffin home by his hair if she had to.

“Oh my God, hey!” A girl teetered out of a bathroom stall on heels she was too drunk for, and hugged Tatum like they went back. “I haven’t seen you in forever!”

“I haven’t seen you ever,” Tatum said, her body freezing inside the hug.

“Erin! Right? Erin O’Malley?”

“She’s my sister,” Tatum sighed, for the millionth time in her life.

“Holy fuck, you all look exactly the same,” the drunk girl laughed. “You’re like creepy clones. Which one are you? Wait, let me guess!”

“No.”

“Kerry!”

“No,” Tatum groaned, pulling out of the hug with considerable effort, and then escaped the bathroom. She needed to get out of here. She’d bribe Griffin with McDonald’s to get him to come with her. Plus, she could go for some McNuggets too. Those and maybe a vanilla milkshake might make up for this whole shitty night.

But when she walked back up to the bar, someone else was sitting on Griffin’s stool.

“Goddammit,” she muttered, looking around, not ready to panic yet. Was he playing foosball? No. Darts? No (which was good, he’d probably put his eye out in this state). Maybe he was just in the bathroom, puking his stupid guts out. She hoped so.

But then she noticed that Q wasn’t there anymore either.

Fuck. Tatum had no choice, her bad mood going from catastrophic to implosive as she got in line at the bar.

When it was her turn, Sal’s cousin smiled at her. “Hey, what can I get you?”

Tatum tried to smile back, but she was going to cry. Like a stupid little sister. Goddammit. “Sal?”

The cousin looked taken aback, but quickly recovered and walked over to Sal, giving him a gentle elbow. He pointed at Tatum waiting for him, and then shrugged when Sal asked him something.

Sal approached carefully, like he didn’t want to scare her away, and didn’t sound nearly as casual as he wanted to. “What’s up, O’Malley?”

“Do you know where Griffin is?” she asked.

Sal looked over, startled when he saw that he didn’t recognize the people sitting where Q and Griffin had been all night. “He was right there a second ago.”

Tatum didn’t care about a second ago. “Did he say anything to you about going somewhere else?”

Sal had always worn his worry so openly, and seeing it now made Tatum’s throat hurt. “He wasn’t happy when I cut him off,” he said. “Neither was Q.”

“Shit,” she said. “I should have told you to wait till I got back to cut him off. Could you check if he’s in the bathroom for me please?”

“Yeah, of course,” Sal said, dropping his towel and coming out from behind the counter. He moved like his feet hurt, and that made Tatum sad too. She watched, arms folded over her chest as he crossed the bar and walked into the men’s room, then right back out. “Nothing,” he reported.

If she cried in front of him, she’d never forgive herself. Instead, she did the next worst thing. “Will you help me find them?”


	2. high school sweethearts, or something american

It had been years since Sal had seen what Tatum looked like at night.

Their nights had always been summer, and now she was shivering in an NYU sweatshirt that clearly wasn’t doing the trick against this autumn chill. Her hair was longer, and she wore it in wild waves, like she’d been feral the last six years and now she was back, tamed and not happy about it. She walked next to him down Bay Street with her arms crossed instead of swinging at her side like old times, and he wondered if she was really this angry now or if it was just because she was with him.

“Why didn’t you wear a jacket?” he asked instead of literally anything else.

“I left it in Ellie’s car,” she said, teeth chattering. “I didn’t think she’d ditch me with Griffin.”

“Should we maybe just wait for her back at the bar?” he asked, unzipping his coat.

“She’s not coming back for us,” Tatum said. “I live close enough to walk home.”

He slipped his coat off. “She just left you?”

“With my big brother.” Tatum stared at the coat he was offering to her. “Put that back on before you catch a damn cold.”

“So _he_ just left you,” Sal said, ignoring her and draping it over her shoulders, careful not to touch. “That’s fucked.”

She hesitated for a moment, but put her arms through the sleeves and zipped it up to her chin. “I’m a big girl, Sal,” she said, and then muttered, “Thank you.”

He smiled; she’d finally said his name. “You’re welcome,” he said, and then looked at her, tiny in his jacket. “Not that big.”

Tatum glanced at him. “Let’s just find them.”

“Sure,” Sal said, having to walk fast to keep up with her. “They probably just went to the first bar they came across. Don’t worry, all right?”

“I’m not worried,” she lied. “I’m pissed.”

“Does he do this to you a lot?”

“I’m not going to talk shit about my brother,” she told him. “Especially not to you.”

“Hey,” he said, stopping in his tracks and using the back of his hand to touch the crook of her elbow and turn her towards him. “Can we just have this out?”

Tatum had a way of standing now that made her seem taller than she really was. That was new. She also had a way of looking at you like you were a lot smaller than you really were. That was new too. He didn’t know who she was, but he wanted to.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s have it out, Sally.”

“Okay, thank you,” he said. “I don’t know why you hate me now but it’s making me feel pretty shitty about myself because you were one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met, and if you hate me then I must be some kind of supreme asshole.”

“I don’t hate you,” she said. “I just didn’t want to see your face ever again.”

Sal threw his arms in the air. “Because I’m some kind of supreme asshole?”

“I have no idea if you’re any kind of asshole,” Tatum told him. “But when I was 16 -- ugh, goddammit. Never mind. This is so fucking stupid.”

Sal let out a laugh of confusion. “What the hell?” He smiled at her, completely at a loss. “I’m going crazy here, O’Malley.”

Tatum took a deep breath, held it, then let it out and pressed forward. “Let’s keep walking. There’s a pub on the next block.”

Sal sighed. This was exhausting. The sooner he found Q, the sooner he could go home and forget about this bizarre girl, so he followed her down the block and into a skeezy pub.

They split up and made a loop around the room, teeming with wasted messes who should’ve been cut off a long time ago. Sal didn’t see any trace of Griffin or Q, and then with a sinking stomach he realized he didn’t see Tatum either.

“Goddammit,” he muttered, striding across the bar when he finally spotted her, looking more like prey than he ever wanted to see any girl look. Trapped between the wall and a row of tables, she was trying to get past a group of guys who had boxed her in by putting their legs up on chairs to stop her, like some kind of asshole bridge trolls. She could climb over them, but then she risked being caught off balance.

As he got closer, he could hear her call them every name in the book, but all that did was make them laugh and make her madder. “Beep beep,” one of them cackled. “Gotta pay the toll.”

Sal was not, by any means, anyone’s definition of an alpha male. He couldn’t just walk up to a group of guys and tell them to go fuck themselves or threaten them with violence and be even remotely convincing. In high school, he’d learned from his friend Joe Gatto how to fight fire with comedy, and for the most part, that was still how he handled conflict. As he squeezed through the crowded bar as fast as he could, he tried to come up with a joke to alleviate the situation, something so clever and cutting they wouldn’t know what had hit them.

But instead, when he got there and saw them laughing and looked at her and saw the colour in her cheeks, Sal Vulcano was pissed.

“Grow up,” he told them in disgust, knowing full well that each of them could individually kick his ass. “Put your stupid legs down so she can go.”

The little shitheads turned their jeers to him, and their taunts were nothing he hadn’t heard before, especially since he’d put on about fifty pounds since high school, so it was nothing less than what he’d expected. What he hadn’t expected, however, was Tatum.

“Say another word to him and see what happens,” she snapped at them, so witheringly they all froze for a second. “I fucking dare you.”

They only froze for that second, though, before their drunken cackles started up again.

“Hey,” Sal said to her, and held out his hand to her. “I got you.”

Tatum looked at him, then at his hand, and then took it and held on tight as she climbed over the ringleader’s legs, praying he wouldn’t touch her in the process. He didn’t, and when she was safely on the other side, she dropped Sal’s hand and didn’t even bother to flip them the bird before she led the way out of the pub.

“Guys are dicks,” Sal told her once they were back in the cold night air. “Are you okay?”

Tatum looked up at him, fleeting but searching. “I’m fine,” she said, eyes back on her feet as she hurried up the sidewalk in search of the next stop. “He wasn’t there.”

“No, you’re right, he wasn’t there, because he left you to find your way home when there’s assholes like that out there,” Sal said, in no mood for any more of this evasive bullshit. “Do you do this for him all the time? Does he even give a fuck?”

“He doesn’t give a fuck about anything when he’s drinking,” Tatum said. “That’s why I have to find him.”

“We’ll find him,” Sal said impatiently. “Who looks out for _you?”_

“I do,” she snapped. “And you don’t know jack shit about me anymore so don’t you dare tell me that that’s not enough.”

“Tatum,” he said, his voice going soft as his heart broke for her. She was so _angry_. “What--”

“I wasn’t crying over New Kids on the Block.”

He was so taken aback he almost laughed. “You weren’t--” He watched her, stammering over his confusion. “You weren’t what?”

“Your friend Q,” Tatum said. “He said the last time he saw me I was crying over New Kids on the Block breaking up.”

Sal searched her face, smiling a little because he didn’t know what else to do. “Yeah,” he said. “You never really struck me as a New Kids fan.”

She scoffed. “I like a couple songs.”

“But you were crying?” he asked. “The last time Q saw you?”

She nodded. “Waiting for my mom in the grocery store parking lot, of all dumbass places.”

“And that’s what you told him when he asked why.”

“Yes.”

They stopped at a crosswalk. Sal waited for the light to turn green before he asked, “What was the real reason?”

Tatum rolled her eyes like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You.”

This time, Sal did laugh. “ _Me?”_ he demanded, like it was the most ludicrous. “ _Why?”_

“I was a stupid kid,” she said. “Sixteen-year-old me thought she knew what love was.”

“What, and that it was me?” he asked.

“Fuck off.”

He laughed. “That’s insane.”

“The fuck did I _just_ say?”

“You didn’t love _me_ ,” Sal laughed again, staring at her in wonderment. “ _I_ loved _you_.”

Tatum stopped walking to give him the dirtiest look she could muster, and Sal took her by the shoulders and hustled her forward because they were in the middle of the goddamn crosswalk. She jerked away from his touch as soon as they were on the other side, where they whirled on each other right there on the curb.

“You broke my heart,” Tatum seethed. “Don’t try to rewrite this so you’re the good guy.”

“Yeah, right back at you,” Sal said. “ _I’m_ the bad guy? That’s fucking -- _really?_ Why did Griffin tell me you didn’t want to see me?”

“I’m going to throw a mailbox at you!” Tatum exclaimed, her rage as cute and scary as it always had been. “Griffin didn’t know about us!”

“No?” Sal demanded. “He seemed to have a pretty good idea about it when he told me if I laid a finger on you I’d be swimming with the fishes!”

“Griffin would never say something so stupid. He has a way better imagination for murder than that.”

“It wasn’t a direct quote!” Sal said. “And also that’s very scary.”

“Whatever,” Tatum said. “You’re full of shit. You just want an excuse for the radio thing.”

“What radio thing?!”

“Where’s a fucking mailbox when you need to throw one,” she muttered, stalking away. “ _What_ _radio thing,_ he says. Unbe-goddamn-lievable.”

Sal chased after her. “Don’t walk away from me in my jacket,” he said. “I’m going to need that back eventually.”

Tatum whipped it off and hurled it at him. “Take it!”

“Hey, here’s a fun idea,” Sal said, catching up to her. “How about you use words and English to say things that actually make sense?”

She glared up at him. “Okay,” she said. “Imagine being 16 and you’re at a party and someone you’ve been crazy about for three years finally kisses you, and oh boy. It’s perfect.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I can imagine that.”

“I mean, maybe you also give him a handy in a treehouse, but who’s keeping track.”

“Maybe,” Sal confirmed. “Let’s not forget that maybe he also returned the favour in aforementioned treehouse.”

“Yeah, maybe he did,” Tatum said. “Maybe it was all a little awkward but maybe it was still kind of nice.”

“I remember, Tatum.”

“And then,” she continued. “He doesn’t call you or come see you or all of a sudden want anything to do with you at all, really. For weeks and weeks.”

“No, hold on a second, that’s not how it happened--”

She didn’t let him interrupt her. “And then maybe one day, weeks and weeks later, you’re still a little heartbroken and you’re listening to the radio while you wait for your mom in a grocery store parking lot, and you hear a cute little dedication.”

Sal felt like he was punched in the stomach. “Oh no.”

“ _Oh no,”_ she repeated, nearly laughing. “How did it go? Something like _this one goes out to Laura. Sal’s hoping you guys can be a little more than friends._ Does that ring a bell?”

Sal’s hands went to his hips as his heart sank to his feet. He conjured up as much casual sass as he could. “Lots of people are named Sal and Laura,” he said, and then recoiled as he watched the fire build in her. He was shocked smoke wasn’t pouring out of her ears. “I mean, okay, yes, I did that. _But_ what if I _didn’t?”_ He forced a smile and gave her a playful, painfully awkward slug on the shoulder. “Boy, would you have egg on your face.”

Tatum’s expression went from furious to dumbfounded. “You’re an alien,” she said. “That’s the only explanation. You’re an alien whose only knowledge of human beings comes from reruns of Happy Days.” She pointed a finger at him. “If you do a fucking impression of the Fonz right now I will _kill you.”_

“I wasn’t going to,” Sal huffed, hiding his thumbs.

“Yes you were! I see your stupid thumbs!”

“I thought it would lighten up the tension!”

“You’re unreal.”

“So are you!”

“Well, thanks,” Tatum said. “The last six years, I haven’t known if it was something I did or didn’t do, or if I wasn’t funny enough, or pretty enough, or if I wasn’t any good at -- whatever, or what the fuck. I still don’t know if any of that’s true, but at least now I know I dodged a bullet when you chose her over me.”

“You can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better, O’Malley,” Sal said. “But it isn’t true.”

“If it _makes me feel better?_ ” she demanded. “Are you kidding me?”

“No, I’m not kidding you,” he told her, neither of them caring that people had to go around them as they stood fighting smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk. “The morning after that party, I went to the mall to buy you flowers -- forget-me-nots, because those were your favourites, right?”

She glared at him. “Just because you know that doesn’t mean anything.”

“You liked the name,” Sal said. “You didn’t even know what they looked like, you just thought the name was nice.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah. So.”

“So that’s when I ran into Griffin,” he said. “He said you told him I creeped you out at his party.”

Frowning, Tatum shook her head. “No I didn’t.”

“That’s what he said,” Sal told her. “He said you were probably overreacting and he still liked me and all but just to be on the safe side, he didn’t want to see me so much as look at you again or he and his buddies would have something to say about it. He said his sisters were off-limits.”

She processed that. Then she smacked his arm. “You didn’t think to do any fact checking, you ding dong?”

“I was a 17 year old male!” Sal exclaimed. “I didn’t think at all!”

“Je _sus_ Chriiiiist,” she groaned, face in her hands.

“All I knew was this girl I really liked thought I was a creep,” Sal said, talking fast and stammering, flustered. “I was crushed so I figured well I’d better save face and act like nothing ever happened.”

“And that’s why you never talked to me again?”

“Why would I want to talk to you again!” he demanded, gesticulating wildly. “You thought I was creepy and your brother was going to kill me! That’s a lose-lose situation!”

Tatum searched his face for sincerity, and found it somewhere buried under the wide eyes and indignation of the high-strung boy she used to know. “Huh,” she said, jamming her hands in her pockets and carrying on up the sidewalk.

“You believe me, don’t you?” Sal asked, falling into stride with her.

“I think so,” she said. “I mean, it explains a lot, but I don’t know if it excuses anything.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but I’m a bit of a chicken.”

Finally, she smiled, and she didn’t aim it at him, but he still felt the fondness in it. “I remember.”

“I should’ve just called you, but rejection’s scary,” he said. “And then there’s the fact that I thought you hung the goddamn moon, and hearing from someone who loves you that I made you uncomfortable? I felt like garbage.”

She glanced at him. “You didn’t make me uncomfortable.”

He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “Well, that’s good to hear,” he said. “Because I’ve been walking on eggshells with every girl I’ve met ever since.”

Tatum bit her lip, unsure what to do with that information. Finally, she shrugged and said, “You’re a gentleman, Vulcano. You can forget everything else, but don’t forget that.”

He nodded, and tried his best to take that to heart. He dropped a wry smile on her. “I probably won’t forget everything else, though.”

“Maybe you should,” she said. “Maybe we both should.”

Sal looked at her. “And start over?”

She sighed while grumpily giving this some thought. “Yeah,” she said at last. “For the purpose of tonight.”

“What about after tonight?”

“There doesn’t need to be after tonight,” Tatum said, her walls up and covered in thorns, but her voice gentle and wavering.

“Oh,” Sal said. “So once we find Q and Griffin, we can go our separate ways again.”

“Exactly,” she said with forced cheer. “This time we can never talk to each other again without it hurting.”

“Sounds great,” he said, and he didn’t mean it at all, but he still smiled at her and put out a hand anyway. “Hi. I’m Sal.”

She smiled back and shook his hand. “Tatum. Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” he said, and now that she was smiling at him, he couldn’t seem to stop. “What do you do?”

“I’m a criminology student at NYU,” she said. “What about you?”

“I bartend and try to write jokes,” he replied. “By the way, you have the cutest freckles I’ve ever seen.”

“Shut the fuck up,” she smiled.

“No,” he smiled back. “Hey, have you seen my buddy Q? He’s sloppy drunk and kinda sad but he’s pretty much the best guy I know so I gotta find him.”

“I think I saw him with my idiot cockblocking brother like an hour ago,” Tatum said. “Why don’t we look for them together?”

“Perfect,” Sal said. “Here, take my jacket.”

Tatum let him hang his coat over her shoulders again, and when she smiled at him and said thank you, Sal gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him,” he told her.

And when they did, Sal was going to kill Griffin.


	3. and i said what about breakfast at tiffany's?

“No.”

“You don’t like Savage Garden?” Sal shrilled. 

“No.”

“And you don’t like Dave Matthews.”

“No.”

“What  _ do  _ you like?”

“Nothing,” Tatum replied. “I don’t like music, movies, books, or people. I’m boring and disdainful, therefore this conversation is quite awkward for me.”

“You like Ace of Base,” Sal said accusingly. “I saw you dancing with your sister.”

“I merely tolerate the interests of my loved ones.”

He rolled his eyes and smiled. “Do you do anything fun?” 

“No, do you?”

“Yeah, I have friends and also laugh sometimes.”

“Neither of which interests me,” Tatum said, fighting a grin. “I give up. We have nothing in common.”

Sal and Tatum had been in and out of all the bars and pubs in a five block radius, but there was still no sign of her brother or his best friend. Somehow, though, he was in good spirits. Because of the hours he worked, he usually stayed up all night anyway, so he wasn’t tired. And he knew he wouldn’t see Tatum after tonight, but there was something nice about walking next to her, so he decided to enjoy her company while he could. She wasn’t boring or disdainful, and he didn’t believe her for one second when she said she didn’t do anything fun, not with a hidden little grin like that. 

He smiled over at her as she checked her watch and looked disgruntled. “You’re funny.”

“Yeah, I know,” she replied dryly. “When I was considering career paths, it was either criminology or stand up comedy. Unfortunately, I get stage fright.”

“I can’t really imagine you being scared of anything,” Sal said. “Except, you know, the Hamburglar.”

Tatum cracked a smile that she quickly covered up with a scowl. “We started over,” she grumbled. “Remember? You’re not supposed to know anything embarrassing about me.”

Sal laughed. “Lucky guess.”

She glared at him, probably thinking she was getting away with the smirk quirking up the corner of her mouth (she wasn’t). “What are you scared of?” 

“I have a growing list,” he chuckled. 

“What’s on it?”

He counted his fears off on his fingers. “Grasshoppers, elevators, clowns, airborne diseases, zombies, certain kinds of birds, cats--”

“You’re still afraid of cats?”

He beamed. “I thought we started over.”

“We did. Get lost.” She laughed, looking like she didn’t mean to but just couldn’t help it. “Cats. You fucking goofball.”

“Losing Q,” Sal said, which wiped the smile off both their faces. “That’s another thing I’m scared of.”

She gave him a startled look. “Why would that happen?” she asked. “You’re obviously still as close as you were in high school.”

“We are; probably closer, to be honest,” Sal said. “It’s just that the last couple of years have been hard for him and sometimes I really worry about him. Actually, sometimes he scares the shit out of me.”

“Is it because he drinks too much?”

“No, not specifically,” he said with a shrug. “I shouldn’t air out his laundry.”

“Hey, as soon as we find him, I’m out of your hair for good,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything. You can talk if you want to talk.”

“Let’s cross here,” he said, taking a sharp right and leading the way into a crosswalk where the  _ do not cross  _ light was counting down from ten. Once they were on the other side, he backtracked, going the opposite direction of where they’d come from, but seemed to know where he was going. “Sorry, I just remembered this place Q likes. It’s the place we went the night he told me he was engaged.”

“Q’s engaged?” Tatum asked, surprised. 

Sal nodded. “Yeah, he’s getting married next year.”

“You don’t sound happy about it,” she said. 

“Neither does he,” he chuckled. 

“So you’re worried when he gets married he won’t have time for you or something?”

“No,” he said. “It’s not that.”

“What is it?”

He sighed. “Q’s got a lot of dreams,” he explained. “He doesn’t always talk about them, but he does.”

“And…” Tatum eyeballed him. “...what, the ol’ ball and chain will put an end to that?”

“No,” he scoffed, annoyed. “He’s done that himself.” 

“Maybe he shouldn’t be getting married,” she said. “If he’s so miserable, it doesn’t really sound fair to her, either.”

“You’re telling me,” Sal said. “But they’ve been together since high school and it’s all he knows.”

“Holy fuck, he’s not marrying Mallory, is he?”

“Sure is.”

“Well, that’s a mistake.”

“Sure is.”

Tatum took that in. For a long time, it seemed like she wasn’t going to say anything at all, like maybe she’d gotten bored of the conversation, but then she elbowed him, not playful, but not unkind. “You won’t lose him,” she said. “Because he won’t lose you.”

Sal nearly took her hand then and there. “Huh.”

“And if you’re around, maybe he’ll get back to those dreams,” she said. “Or maybe he won’t, but that’ll be on him. You can’t stop people from fucking up their lives if that’s what they’re hell bent on doing.”

“What about Griffin?” he asked, instead of thanking her. 

“What about him?” she asked. 

“He’s been hell bent on disaster for as long as I’ve known him,” Sal said, stopping in front of the pub doors without making a move to go in. “And you’re still chasing after him, apparently.”

Tatum looked like she wanted to reach for the door and get away from this conversation, but he was in the way. “He’s the only big brother I have.”

“Yeah, so maybe he should start acting like it.”

Tatum rolled her eyes. “Can we go back to pretending we don’t know each other?”

He chuckled. “You drive me nuts,” he muttered, turning and opening the door. He let her go in first, and this time, stuck to her side. 

By now, it was close to two, and last call was looming. Q had always liked this pub because it was a good balance of divey and nostalgic, with its cheap beer and old arcade games and never-ending eighties music, and Sal wished it was a couple years ago before everything started to hurt. He wished it was Q he was walking in with (or, maybe more accurately, he wished Q was on one side and Tatum was on the other). He wished they were here to play some pinball and get drunk enough to get the giggles. He just wished they were all laughing. 

The bartender hollered  _ last call  _ and a drunken beanpole who looked too young to be in here stumbled into Tatum on his way to order a double at the bar. Tatum gently took her arm back from Sal, who had instinctively reached out to hold her steady.

"Do you see him?" Sal asked. 

She shook her head, pursing her lips as she scanned the room and came up with nothing. "No."

"Me neither."

"Well," she said, a little shaky. “I don’t know. I guess we call it a night.”

“I could see if they’ll let me use their phone and call my bar,” Sal suggested. “Maybe they headed back there.”

“Don’t bother,” Tatum said. “They probably hit up an off-sale and are drinking out of paper bags somewhere.”

“Well, there’s a park not too far--”

“I’m tired, Sally,” Tatum said, years in her voice and eyes as she looked up at him and tried to smile. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Okay,” he said, doing everything in his power not to hug her. “Why don’t we get you in a cab then, how’s that sound?”

“It’s going to be a nightmare getting a cab tonight,” she said, her throat sounding like it hurt. “It’s Thanksgiving.”

“It won’t be that bad,” Sal said, even though he knew she was right. “I’ll wait with you.”

“It’s like fifteen blocks, I’ll just walk.”

“You’re not  _ walking,”  _ Sal said sassily. He’d had it up to here with how difficult she was -- she was like this sweet little stray who kept darting into traffic every time he got too close. “It’s two in the fucking mor -- oh, mother _ fucker.” _

“Excuse me?” she demanded, ready for a fight, when she followed his gaze and realized he’d spotted Griffin coming out of the bathroom. They watched as he staggered across the bar, drunk as hell but benevolent as fuck, and came to a stop at a table full of people neither Sal nor Tatum had ever seen in their lives, and sat down with his arms around their shoulders. Sal and Tatum stared as they greeted him happily. 

“Last call, buddy!” they heard one of them shout as they got closer. 

“Whoops!” Griffin gasped, standing back up with all the grace of a newly-birthed giraffe, and made a beeline for the bar. 

Sal watched Tatum as all the worry fell from her shoulders and she muttered  _ thank God  _ and rushed towards him. He kept up with her, but gave her space as she cut Griffin off before he got to the bar. 

“Tatum!” Griffin cheered, looking pleasantly surprised to see her suddenly appear in his path, and also completely obliterated. “What are you doing here!”

She looked up at him, a foot shorter than him, but still somehow fucking formidable. “I’ll give you a ten second headstart before I hunt you down and kill you,” Tatum told him, so calm it even struck terror in Sal’s heart.

Griffin laughed. “You’re such a killjoy,” he slurred, stepping around her. “Want a beer? Last call. Then we can hit up some off-sales.”

“ _ Griffin,” _ she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “Let’s  _ go.”  _

_ “Tatum,”  _ he said back. “You’re not my  _ mother.” _

“Come on, buddy,” Sal said, doing his best to stay smiling and friendly despite the anger buzzing through his blood. “She’s your little sister, and she’s trying to help you out. She’s been out looking for you everywhere.”

“Sally!” Griffin exclaimed, just noticing him. “Let me buy you a drink!”

“No thanks, Griff,” Sal said. “Where’s Q?”

Griffin looked confused. “Quinn?”

“Yeah, Brian Quinn,” Sal said. “Where is he?”

“He went home.”

Sal held his breath. “Did he walk or take a cab?”

“Cab,” Griffin said, his arms around their shoulders like he was having a hard time staying upright. “I gave him money. He shouldn’t be getting married, man. He’s a mess.” 

“Speaking of messes,” Sal said. “It’s time for you to go home.”

“Yeah, just let me finish this drink,” he said, taking his arms back from around their shoulder and stumbling towards the bar. 

“Griffin, goddammit!” Tatum snapped. 

She was so upset that Griffin stopped and looked at her. “What?”

She shook her head, crushed. “You’ve broken my heart enough tonight,” she said. “Please just come home with me.”

It was like she’d snapped her fingers and broken a spell. “Okay,” he said, confused and concerned. He pushed away from the bar and went to her, looking at her like he just now figured out that he’d fucked up and he was gutted over it. It was the first time Sal had ever seen how much Griffin actually loved her. “Sorry, Tatum.” 

“Whatever,” she snapped, but when he tripped over a bar stool and went down hard, laughing, the anger and hurt on her face was replaced with heartbreak. She stood there, half his size, helpless as she watched him not even try to get up. 

So Sal knelt down beside Griffin so she wouldn’t have to. He threw Griff’s arm over his shoulder and slung an arm around his back, and eased him to his feet. “Upsy-daisy,” Sal said. He had plenty of experience with helping fallen drunks off their backs, and he tried to tell himself this was just another day at the office. “One foot in front of the other buddy, that’s it.”

Tatum locked eyes with Sal and gave him a solemn nod before she turned away. He was almost grateful that he had this big drunk idiot to hold up, because if he didn’t, he couldn’t think of anything else that would stop him from burying her in his arms. 

+

Tatum was right: it was impossible to catch a cab. The trio walked the fifteen blocks, with Sal propping Griffin up and forcing him forward while Tatum silently led the way. What should have been a thirty-minute walk was closer to an hour, and by the time they reached her Great Kills apartment, it was after three in the morning, and if Sal’s feet didn’t hurt before, they certainly did now. 

“What floor do you live on?” Sal asked as Tatum dug through her bag for the building keys. 

“Fourth,” she replied, the first word she’d spoken in blocks, her voice hollow and terse. 

Sal adjusted his hold on Griffin; he’d become too heavy a long time ago. “Do you have an elevator?”

Tatum looked at him, and, to his surprise, smirked. “Why? Scared?”

He smiled back. “No,” he laughed. “Dick.”

She allowed herself to laugh softly, but it came out tired, and she looked embarrassed. He hated it. “Yeah, I have one.” She laughed, a real one this time. “An elevator, I mean, not a dick.”

He laughed too, both of them descending into delirious snickers. “That’s good,” he said. “I was just asking in case you needed help lugging numb nuts here up four flights of stairs.”

“Oh,” she said, opening the door and leaning against it. “Well, I’m fine.”

“Okay.” He didn’t know what to do now that it was the end: smile, hug her, kiss her cheek, shake her hand? “Good. That’s great.”

Tatum looked at Griffin, who had officially run out of steam and could barely keep his eyes open, and then she looked at Sal and shrugged. “You can come up anyway.”

Sal hadn’t expected that. He glanced at Griffin, and then at her, and then inside the building, and then back at her. He placed a hand over his heart. “Me?” 

Tatum narrowed her eyes at him and then scoffed with a baffled smile. “Goddammit, Vulcano. Get in here.”


	4. if you forgive me all this

Sal followed Tatum inside the building happily, albeit with some effort, as Griffin seemed to be growing heavier the sleepier he got. Somehow, he managed to maneuver the idiot into the elevator, and then propped him up in a corner while Tatum pressed the button for her floor. They rode in silence other than Griffin’s promises to buy McDonald’s for everyone tomorrow. 

“Remember that time you had a birthday party at McDonald’s?” Griffin asked, aiming his bleary-eyed smile in Tatum’s general direction. 

Tatum watched the numbers climb higher, ignoring him. 

“You were six,” Griffin said. “One of the girls in your class was mean to you and you cried. Remember?”

Sal patted him on the arm. “She’s tired, buddy.” 

“Mom got mad,” Griffin went on, undeterred and trying to press through his heavy slur. “Said we didn’t have money for birthday parties in the first place and here you were crying.”

“Griffin, seriously,” Sal sighed. “Knock it off.”

“So you came and found me,” Griffin said, and Sal reached out to hold his elbow when the elevator lurched to a stop. 

Tatum tossed him a bitter look before the doors slid open and she stepped out into the hall.

Griffin managed to follow after her on his own. “You came and found me and we spent the rest of your party playing with Happy Meal toys at a table by ourselves,” he said. “You always come and find me.”

Tatum walked up to a door at the end of the hall and unlocked it. She went inside without a word. 

Griffin followed her inside, although the weight of the door made him stumble for a moment. Sal trailed behind, feeling like maybe he should leave, but more than that, knowing Tatum needed a friend right now whether she wanted it or not. 

“Time to sleep it off, Griff,” Sal said quietly. 

“Tatum,” Griffin called, not fighting it when Sal closed a firm hand around his bicep. “I’m sorry this is how you find me.”

Tatum marched out of the kitchen and handed him a glass of water. “Goodnight.”

Sal could hardly stop himself from wincing at how much she was hurting. “Where should I take him?”

“He can sleep in my room,” she said stiffly. “But if he pukes in my bed I’m going to kill him.”

“I’d help you get away with it,” Sal said, giving her a smile he hoped would cheer her up, and to his relief, she smiled back. 

And despite his drunken stupor, Griffin caught it. “I always knew you two would end up together.”

Fury gathered behind Tatum’s eyes and Sal swept him away before she could actually murder him. “Jesus Christ,” Sal muttered. “You’re cruisin for a bruisin, my friend.”

Slipping off his shoes, Sal walked Griffin down the hall and into a neatly-kept bedroom. He kept the lights off and tried not to glance around too much, and then dumped Griffin on the bed he didn’t deserve to sleep in. 

Griffin sat on the bed and carefully set his water glass on the bedside table next to a picture of them with their five sisters. He looked defeated.

“Take your shoes off,” Sal said. “And maybe like sleep on your side so you don’t choke on your puke and die. Also, don’t puke.”

“Sorry Sally.”

“It’s fine, Griff, just go to sleep.”

“I always liked you.”

“Yeah, bud, I liked you too.”

“She never said anything bad about you,” Griffin muttered, sinking down heavily on his back. “Not once.”

Sal nodded, not taking the bait, not now. “All right.”

“I’m an asshole.”

“Okay,” Sal said. “Do you need me to get you a barf bucket or are you going to be cool?”

“She wouldn’t talk about you at all,” Griffin continued, barely awake. “That’s how I knew she loved you.”

Sal looked at him, this sloppy drunk Irish giant, reeking of liquor and sweat and cigarette smoke, so insignificant and useless in this moment that it was almost unbelievable how much damage he’d caused. No, maybe Sal and Tatum wouldn’t have run off into the sunset together, and maybe they would have broken each other’s hearts even worse somewhere else along the line, and who knew, maybe Sal would be as miserable as Q was now, cornering himself into a life he was scared of because he didn’t want to hurt anyone. Maybe it all would have bullshit anyway. 

But he’d loved her too. He really had. And now, standing here in her room, he finally felt the full weight of what could have been, but never would.

“I told you to sleep on your side, you moron,” Sal muttered, watching as Griffin dutifully curled up into a sad little ball. “And take off your goddamn shoes.”

From the amount of groaning Griffin did, you’d think Sal had just asked him to do the dishes and take out the trash, but he did it. Sal was too annoyed to say goodnight, so he didn’t, and instead turned and left the room without a word. 

Her apartment was small, so it didn’t take long to find Tatum in the living room. She was curled up in the corner of the couch, and she’d turned on a lamp that cast gentle orange light and kept the shadows dark and made her look cozier than he wanted her to. 

“Hey,” he said, glancing around the room, everything so much sweeter here in this dim glow. “I’m pretty sure he won’t puke in your bed.”

Tatum snorted. “It would be his fucking funeral.”

“No shit. It’s nice of you to let him have the room.”

She shrugged. “I figured if you were going to hang out here for a bit, I didn’t want him snoring away on the couch the whole time.”

Sal smiled before he could stop himself. “Oh. Okay.”

“I mean, you don’t have to hang out,” she said, frowning. “I just figured there’s still a couple hours before the sun’s up and we go back to strangers.”

His smile fell. “I’ll stay,” he said. “My feet could use a rest.”

“Do you want anything?” she asked, getting up and disappearing into the kitchen. “I’m a poor university student so your choices are beer and ramen.”

“Oh -- thanks, I’ll take a beer,” he said, even though he knew it would immediately put him to sleep. “Thanks, Tatum.”

She gasped in the other room. “I lied; I also have leftover pizza. Want some?”

“Sure,” he laughed. It wasn’t so hard to remember how sweet she was. He sat down on the other end of the couch, smiling when he discovered it was both extremely secondhand and extremely comfy. “Your place is nice.”

“Thanks, I like it,” she said, coming back with two cheap beers and a box of pizza. She handed one to him, set the box in the middle of the couch, and curled back up in her corner. “It’s so quiet.”

Sal frowned for a moment; there was nothing about this street that was quiet -- just now, he could hear sirens and drunk people singing “Sweet Caroline” and a car alarm going off. And then he realized what she meant: she was alone. 

“Growing up with six siblings probably got a little noisy, huh?” he asked, taking a slice when she did. 

She nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, I love them.”

He smirked. “That’s not something I’d ever get wrong about you.”

That piece of kindness seemed to startle her a little, but she took a sip of her beer to hide it. “That’s why I went backpacking after high school instead of straight to college,” she said. “Three of my sisters still lived at home while they were taking classes, and I would’ve had to do the same, because Griffin was right, we didn’t have any money. But I needed out of that house.” 

“Your house could get a little crazy, I remember that,” Sal chuckled. “I also remember you guys had some legendary parties.”

“Griffin did,” she said. “I was never supposed to be there.”

He smiled. “I’m glad you were.”

She didn’t smile back, although it looked like a struggle. “Ellie would’ve killed me if she’d known,” she said. “Luckily she was too distracted sneaking around with the hot nerd girl from Radioshack, or I would’ve missed out on all the best parties.”

“Those two weren’t sneaky,” Sal said. “Even Murr knew about them and he’s a stupid idiot.”

“Murr!” Tatum exclaimed. “I forgot about Murr. My sister Beth had a crush on him.”

“Your sister Beth is a stupid idiot too,” Sal said, but there was affection in his voice that made her smile. “Did Ellie and Radioshack girl ever make it work?”

“Nah, Radioshack girl dumped her right around the time you ripped my stupid idiot heart out,” Tatum said, so casually he almost dribbled beer down his chin. “Any other time, she wouldn’t have bought my New Kids on the Block bullshit for a second, but she was dealing with her own shit so she believed me every time I told her I was crying over Joey McIntyre.”

Maybe she could talk about it like a skinned knee, but Sal couldn’t. “That sucks,” he said, awkward and inept. “I remember she was really protective of you.”

Tatum smiled, seeming to pick up on his discomfort. No more talk of hearts. “She was,” she said. “Every time Griffin had a party, she’d walk me over to my friend’s house for a sleepover so I wouldn’t be exposed to all the debauchery.”

He grinned. “Right,” he said, remembering. “Becky D’Angelo. Didn’t she always threaten to rat you out for sneaking back in?”

“Oh, every time, but I did her bio homework to keep her quiet,” Tatum said. “So we had a symbiotic relationship.”

“Symbiotic,” Sal repeated. “I see you’ve been doing your biology homework.”

Tatum giggled, and Sal laughed at the sound of it. It had been fucking years, but here she was. The girl who let him in when he knocked the secret knock on her treehouse door while parties raged on inside her house. The girl who could stay up all night if you gave her cream soda after 7pm. The girl who couldn’t drink cream soda without getting the hiccups, and who couldn’t get the hiccups without getting the giggles. The girl he’d been so in love with he’d missed out on all the best parties so he could be near her and would miss out on a million more if it meant a little more time. Here she was. 

“I know we’re supposed to pretend nothing ever happened,” Tatum said, reaching for her second slice. “But those were some good times.”

“The best,” Sal agreed, but didn’t want to talk about why they had to pretend. “Remember the time Mikey Mariano dropped acid and climbed the tree?” 

“Yes!” Tatum laughed. “He thought he was a giraffe.”

“No one could get him to stop eating leaves,” Sal said, delighted when she lit up with laughter. “Was that the same party where someone started a fire in your kitchen?”

“No, the fire was way before that; you and I hadn’t started seeing each other yet,” she said. “The fire was the same party where you geniuses went mattress surfing down the stairs.”

“Jesus Christ, where were your parents?”

“Oh, Dad was drinking and Mom was having an affair,” she said like she was talking about the weather. “They had other priorities.”

“Like perpetuating the Irish Catholic stereotype?”

“Yeah, classic,” Tatum said. “Besides, when you have seven kids, eventually they start raising each other.”

“You didn’t talk about any of this back then,” Sal said. 

“No.”

“I would’ve listened.”

Tatum shrugged. “Griffin kind of blocked me from most of it. I didn’t even find out about my mom’s affair until he told me like a year ago when he was hammered.”

It was heartbreaking, these little wolf pups left alone to raise each other and survive on bad habits. It also wasn’t for him to comment on. “I’d still listen,” he said quietly. 

She finally met his eye and gave him a wry smile. “I don’t want to talk.”

Sal returned the smile, although his was a little more unsure. “What else did you have in mind?” He laughed when she rolled her eyes mightily. “Does it hurt to roll your eyes that hard?”

“Does it hurt to be such a clueless dolt?” she retorted.

“I have literally never in my entire life been called a dolt,” Sal grinned. “I think you might actually be 90 years old.”

“That would explain why I like black licorice and shuffleboard so much,” she said. 

“And all those crime shows,” he said. “You and my dad had the exact same taste in television.”

Tatum laughed. “Your dad has excellent taste,” she said. “Has he watched the new Law and Order spin off? Special Victims Unit? It’s so good.”

“You’d have to ask him,” Sal said. “My dad and I don’t have a ton in common, at least when it comes to entertainment.”

“I remember that,” Tatum said. “He was always very salt of the earth. And you were… you were full of funny bones.”

He smiled. “Well.” He didn’t know what else to say; he was so charmed he just sat there smiling down at his hands. 

“You said you write jokes,” Tatum said. “Are you still pursuing that?”

He shrugged. “I got an accounting degree.”

Tatum looked a little sad. “You were the funniest person I knew,” she said. “That was why I had such a crush on you.”

“Thanks,” he smiled, a hand going to the back of his neck, bashful. “Doesn’t pay the bills, though.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Sounds like Q’s not the only one giving up on big dreams.”

“Nah,” Sal said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Tatum drank to that. “That’s good. The world needs people who look at it like you do.”

Sal smiled, sitting up straighter without even realizing it. “Really?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “I mean, I look at the world and see all the bullshit -- that’s why I’m studying criminology: all I can see are cracks I want to fix.”

“I guess someone’s got to,” Sal said, even though he wished it wasn’t her. 

“You, though,” she said. “You look at the world, and it makes you laugh. It makes you sad too, I remember that -- I remember you cried the first time you heard ‘Nothing Compares 2 U.’”

Sal huffed indignantly. “Anyone with a heart cries at that song.”

Tatum arched a playful eyebrow at him. “I don’t cry at that song.”

He gawked at her in utter disbelief. “But all the flowers that her mama planted died when she went away.”

Tatum pursed her lips and looked off to the side to hide the way she wanted to melt, but she couldn’t stop her smile. “That’s what I mean,” she said. “You see all the bullshit too but at the end of the day, you do something nice about it.” She lowered her gaze, embarrassed. “Or at least that’s how I remember you.”

“Weird,” Sal said, smiling slowly. “A couple hours ago you were threatening to throw a mailbox at me.”

“Not seriously,” Tatum said. “That would be a federal offense.”

Sal smiled at her. He wanted to reach out and touch her arm but knew to keep his hands to himself. “Thanks for saying all that.”

She shrugged. “Thanks for helping me.” 

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “No big deal.”

She looked at him. “Yes it was.”

“Why, because no one else ever does?”

Tatum picked at the label on her beer bottle while she thought. “It was a big deal because I don’t make it easy to help me but you still did,” she said. “And because before tonight, the last thing we even remembered about each other was getting our hearts broken.”

Sal studied her for a long beat. “That’s not all we remembered.”

Tatum didn’t like being studied. “Before I walked into your bar tonight, whenever I thought about you, that’s all I remembered. You hurting me.”

Sal tossed his uneaten pizza crust back in the box. “If you say so.”

Annoyed at being backed into a corner, Tatum lashed out, grasping at straws. She pointed at his pizza crust in the box as if it were the biggest inconvenience in the world. “You still don’t eat your crust?”

Sal smiled. “Seems like you remember quite a bit, actually.”

Somehow, that made her annoyance soften. “I remember so much stupid shit about you,” she laughed grumpily. “You used to collect baseball cards. You loved George Carlin. You kept a literal list called ‘Words That I’d Be a Little Bit Embarrassed if I Had to Say Them in a Public Speech.’”

Sal laughed. “Like tenderloins and gargoyle.”

“And  _ font,”  _ she laughed back. “You killed me.”

He cackled. Funny she should say that, because she was killing him. He didn’t even know what to say; he just wanted her to keep remembering him. 

“I remember any time your dad went anywhere on the weekend, you tagged along,” Tatum continued. “Whenever something really made you laugh, you always fell down and you never cared who you took out in the process.”

Sal shrugged with an impish grin. “Guilty.”

She laughed. “The first time we met,” she said. “I think about that sometimes.”

“Your house,” Sal said. “I went over there to do a group project with Griffin. You were dancing in the kitchen.”

“Erase that from your memory immediately,” Tatum ordered. 

“No,” he smiled. 

“Whatever,” she said. “That wasn’t the first time we met anyway.”

“It wasn’t?”

She shook her head. “The first time was at church.” 

“Really?”

“Yeah, it was before high school; you didn’t even know Griffin yet,” Tatum said. “I was probably 11 or 12? Our families were in the same row.”

“Holy fuck,” Sal said, grinning slowly as it came back to him. “I totally forgot about this. Of course. You were sitting next to me.”

She smiled. “You shared your song book with me.”

He smiled back. “You turned the pages.” 

“Your mom kept elbowing you to sing along,” she said. 

“And your sister kept making you laugh,” Sal said. “Which made  _ me  _ laugh and then  _ I  _ got in trouble.”

“You  _ were  _ trouble,” Tatum laughed. “I had a crush on you from that day forward.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said, and wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, or if she’d shifted a little closer to him. He caught her gaze and didn’t let go. “I really fucked up, didn’t I?”

She shrugged. “Who knows?” she said. “It’s hard to quantify something like a high school romance in the grand scheme of things.”

Sal stared at her and then burst into a grin. “Only you.”

Tatum frowned at him. “Only me what?”

“Only you would use quantify and romance in the same sentence,” he chuckled, then finished off his beer. The silence was loud and sharp; suddenly even the sirens and singing were gone, leaving them with nothing but this cozy room and its gentle light and the inches between them. “Laura turned me down, by the way.”

“I know she did,” Tatum said, her expression icing over again. “I don’t know why you’re talking about her right now.”

“Because I fucked up,” he said. “And if I never see you again, I just wanted you to know I was sorry. I was sorry then and I’m sorry now.”

Tatum looked at her hands. “I heard you went out with her like a year later.”

“Yeah, and she dumped me right before we were supposed to go see Rent,” Sal said with a deprecating laugh. “Had that one coming, I guess. I spent like $300 on those tickets.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “Did you still go?”

“No,” he said. “I wandered around Broadway trying to sell someone my tickets while crying my eyes out for hours.”

Tatum laughed. “I know. I heard.”

He threw a pillow at her in amused outrage. “Then why did you  _ ask,  _ you asshole?”

“I wanted to hear what you said,” she told him with a sly smirk, taking the pillow and tucking it behind her back. 

_ “You’re  _ trouble,” Sal said, but couldn’t keep a straight face. “Give me my pillow back.”

She snorted. “No.” She finished her beer and closed the pizza box. “Do you want another beer or do you want to call it a night?”

The idea of calling it a night made his stomach flip, but then so did the idea of staying. “Uh, I’ll take another,” he said. “If that’s okay.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t,” she said, and he had no doubt that was true. She took the empty pizza box and their empty bottles to the kitchen, and he tried not to watch her go, tried not to memorize the way she barely lifted her feet as she shuffled along in her socks, tried not to want to get up and follow after her. When she returned, he was sure every failure was written all over his face, but she handed him the beer without a word anyway. 

Their fingers brushed as he took the bottle from her, and their eyes met before they both quickly pulled away and she went back to her corner of the couch. She pulled the pillow out from behind her back and dropped it between them so he could take it if he wanted it, but he didn’t. He just wanted her to sit closer. 

“Are you tired?” she asked. 

He shook his head, maybe more enthusiastically than he should have. 

“The buses aren’t running anymore,” she said. “Do you want to watch TV with me?”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, looking at her like he’d say yes to anything she asked him. 

“Shitty middle of the night reruns are my favourite,” she said, reaching for the remote control. “I love being awake in the middle of the night. It makes me feel like myself.”

Sal could hardly help his little sigh; he hoped she didn’t notice. “I remember,” he said quietly.

Judging by the look on her face, she noticed. She looked unnerved for a moment, then quickly averted her eyes, as if she’d seen something she didn’t want to, and turned on the TV. “Of course fucking Happy Days is on,” she laughed. 

He laughed with her. “Finally, something I can understand.”

Tatum pulled a blanket from the back of the couch and covered her legs with it. Sal watched her from the corner of his eye as she curled up even tighter in her little corner, nursing her beer and smiling softly through the theme song. 

“Do we have to do this?” Sal blurted. 

Tatum froze with the bottle almost to her lips. “Do what?”

“Stop.”

She looked from him to the television in confusion. “Uhh, stop what--”

“This,” he insisted. “You and me.”

Tatum’s confused expression fell. “Oh.” 

“I don’t want to be strangers again,” he said. “I can’t pretend I don’t know you. I know you. I want to know you. Do we have to do this?”

She took a swig of her drink and shrugged. 

He watched her like a puppy waiting for his person to throw the damn ball already. He laughed, aching. “A shrug isn’t an answer.”

Tatum looked at him. “What do you want me to say?”

“You’ll give me another chance.”

She shrugged again, smiling against her will when he whacked her with the pillow. 

“Quit it,” he laughed. 

She laughed too, just as soft, just as nervous. Finally, she shook her head and said, “Yeah.”

Sal grinned. “Yeah?”

Tatum didn’t quite meet his eye. “I could use a friend,” she said. 

“I can do that,” he said. 

She smirked. “I know you can.” 

Sal wanted to hug her, but stayed where he was because he knew if he did he’d just wind up kissing her too. “Can’t wait,” he smiled.  

Tatum snuggled deeper into her blankets, eyes locked defiantly on the television screen. “But the second I start to fall for you again, I’m out.”

Sal’s heart caught in his fucking throat. Well, fuck. He gently clinked the neck of his beer bottle against hers. “Cool.”


	5. talked ourselves to death, never saying what i wanted

Sal and Tatum were fast asleep when the sun rose soft and hazy over the city a few hours later. Tatum didn’t know who had fallen asleep first or what had woken her up, but when she jerked awake with a start, _Happy Days_ had turned into _Good Morning America_ and the 8 o’clock traffic jam and road rage were in full swing outside her window. They were still on opposite sides of the couch, but somehow she’d ended up angled towards him and her blanket had wound up over his knees. She sat up quickly, careful not to steal the blanket away from him.

Her sudden movement woke Sal up, although he didn’t seem nearly as weirded out as she did. He blinked, bleary-eyed, and smiled over at her. “Morning,” he said.

“Hey,” she replied, pushing the blanket off her lap to hide the fact that they were sharing it.

“I think I fell asleep,” he said as he stretched sleepily.

She averted her eyes from the bit of skin she saw when he stretched. “I did too.”

“I can tell,” he said, and if he didn’t stop smiling at her she was going to have to kill him. “You always wake up looking like you’ve seen a ghost when you accidentally fall asleep.”

She had a million things to say about that, but instead she stood up, rubbed her sore neck, picked up their empty beer bottles, and muttered, “I need coffee.”

“Need a hand?” he asked.

“No thanks,” she replied, retreating into the kitchen just to get away from him and his stupid face and stupid eyes and all the stupid things she remembered about him and he remembered about her.

She hurt all over, and she didn’t know if it was because she was so tired or because she’d slept sitting up or if it was because she hadn’t laughed this much in years or if it was just her whole fucking heart. All she did know was that her stomach sank when she caught him glancing at the clock on her VCR instead of watching her walk away as he had last night, and she found herself wishing she could hide the time from him.

“Mind if I use your phone?” he called from the living room.

“Go ahead,” she called back, peeling open the coffee canister and measuring out two scoops of grounds.

“Thanks, I just gotta call Q,” he said, and her stomach sank again, because he was a sweetheart.

Trying not to listen to his conversation (although she couldn’t help but smile whenever he laughed), Tatum hopped up on the kitchen counter and watched the coffee drip. She didn’t need caffeine; she just needed Sal to leave and she needed her dumbass brother to get up so she could crawl into bed and forget this entire night had happened. Now that the sun was up, she realized what a ludicrous idea it was to think she could be friends with Sal again. She could hardly listen to him laugh without wanting to cry.

She was in the middle of trying to conjure up an excuse as to why she was busy so that he take the hint and go home when he walked into the kitchen.

“Hey,” Sal said, smiling at her as he leaned against the doorway, and she wondered how he could have bedhead when he hadn’t slept in a bed. “That coffee smells good.”

“You can have some,” she grumbled, jumping off the counter and pouring two cups. She passed one to him and made sure not to let their fingers touch this time. “Did you get ahold of Q?”

“Yeah,” he said. “He made it home okay.”

“That’s good. Was his fiance mad?”

“Well, no, not about him coming home late,” he said. “Q said she wasn’t even there when he got home. She was just pissed about why I was calling so early.”

“Yikes,” she said. “I take it she wasn’t stoked that you were calling at eight to make sure Q made it home alive?”

“I panicked and got all indignant and said I was just calling to see if he was still bringing potato salad to Murr’s party tonight,” Sal said. “So now the little shithead has to bring potato salad.”

“That’ll teach him,” Tatum said.

“Probably not,” he chuckled. “Hey, by the way, wanna come to a party with me tonight?”

Tatum blew on her coffee and took a sip. It was far too hot to drink but she needed something to do to keep herself from saying _yes._ She grimaced in pain.

“You burned your damn tongue, didn’t you?” Sal asked, grinning with affection.

“No.”

“You just casually make that anguished face?”

“No, I mean no, I don’t want to go to a party with you tonight,” she said. “We just hung out for like 12 hours.”

“So?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“12 hours in 6 years isn’t very long,” he pointed out, although the hurt from her rejection was all over him, in the wringing of his hands and the way he couldn’t quite look at her. “It’s not like a date or whatever.”

“Who said anything about a date?” she scoffed.

“No one did,” he scoffed back. “I was just clarifying.”

“Well, you shouldn’t need to clarify that when we’re just friends,” Tatum said. “Do you ask Q to hang out and then feel the need to tell him it’s not a date?”

Sal laughed suddenly. “So I take it you’re still a total grump in the morning when you don’t get enough sleep.”

“Stop that!” she snapped, setting her coffee down so hard it sloshed onto her hand.

“Stop what?” he demanded.

“Remembering me like that!”

“Like what!”

“You can’t keep fucking waxing poetic about what I was like in the morning because then all I can think about is what _you_ were like in the morning and at night and everything in between and I stopped doing that a long time ago and I’m not about to start up again,” Tatum told him, flustered. “If you want to be my friend, you have to stop it.”

Sal held his hands up. “Okay, sorry.” He let out a startled breath as if he’d just missed being hit by a car. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Tatum muttered, mad and embarrassed. “I’m just… a total grump in the morning.”

They both laughed nervously, the tension lifted. Tatum passed him the sugar for his coffee and took hers black and asked him about his plans for Thanksgiving. He told her he’d already done the big family dinner earlier that week, and besides Murr’s party tonight, he had to work all weekend, and said maybe she should stop by for a drink sometime. Tatum said maybe she and Ellie would as a way of getting out of doing dishes after Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday, but had zero intentions of doing so.

They sat on opposite counters, drinking their coffees, swapping Thanksgiving stories new and old until they had each other in stitches and wiping away tears of laughter. Out in the living room, they could hear that  _Good Morning America_ had ended and become _Family Feud._ Tatum forgot about how tired and sore she was, and Sal couldn’t have taken his eyes off her to check the time even if he’d wanted to.

Tatum slid off the kitchen counter to pour them both a second cup of coffee, jumping out of her skin and nearly dropping the pot when her front door suddenly creaked slowly open. Sal set his mug down beside him and looked at her and asked, “Did we lock the door last night?”

Tatum was positive she had, but before she could answer, a six-foot-four ginger with a hangover skulked in through the door, and she realized it was her brother creeping around like a cat burglar and crinkling the paper bag in his hand despite his best efforts to be quiet.

“Who are you, fucking Santa Claus?” Tatum demanded. “Why are you tiptoeing around like that?”

Startled, Griffin clutched the paper bag to his heart as he looked at her with wide eyes like he’d just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Likewise, asshole,” she said. “I thought you were in my room. When did you leave?”

Griffin wandered into the kitchen, bashful but still cheeky, as if he knew no bad night could ever make anyone hate him. “You two were sleeping so I snuck out and got McDonald’s.”

Tatum frowned as she took the paper bag from him, the smell of salt and grease wafting up and making her stomach growl. She had exactly zero _thank you_ s in her heart for him right now, but she softened slightly. “What did you get me?” she grumbled.

“Bacon N Egger,” he replied.

“That’s my favourite,” she grumbled.

“I know,” he said proudly. “Sal, I didn’t know what you liked so I just got you the same as Tate.”

“Thanks buddy,” Sal said, happily taking the wrapped breakfast sandwich that Tatum handed to him. “You were babbling about getting McDonald’s last night but I figured you’d be too drunk to remember.”

“I don’t forget about breakfast,” Griffin said. “I do forget most of last night, though. When did you two start hanging out again?”

“Since we had to join forces in tearing Staten Island apart to find you,” Sal told him, because Tatum was too busy eating and shooting daggers at her brother to respond herself. "Kinda shitty of you to leave her like that."

“Guess I deserve this hangover then,” Griffin chuckled. He knew they were angry, especially Tatum, and he wanted to distract from it. “What’s the plan for tonight?”

“There isn’t one,” Tatum told him.

“Well, there’s a party,” Sal said.

“Ah yes,” Tatum said. “Sal’s going to a party.”

“At James Murray’s?” Griffin asked.

Sal nodded, taking a bite of his sandwich. “Yeah, I’m trying to talk Tatum into coming with me.”

“I was gonna go to that too,” Griffin said. “Q told me about it last night.”

Good, Tatum thought. All the more reason not to go. She was off babysitter duty tonight. If she got stuck looking after Griffin two nights in a row, she’d probably wind up leading him into traffic. Now she had a good excuse to say no, and from the way Sal looked at her, it seemed like he knew it too.

And so did Griffin. “But I’m gonna take it easy tonight,” he said. “You should go, Tatum. Represent the O’Malleys.”

Tatum’s mouth was full so all she could do was shake her head furiously.

“Don’t give me that face,” Griffin told her. “It wouldn’t kill you to have fun sometimes, you know.”

She swallowed hard, hating the way they were both looking at her. “I have to study.”

“Not on a Friday night, you don’t,” Griffin said. “Anyway, I’m gonna get going, thanks for letting me crash.” He headed for the front door, but tossed a smile over his shoulder before he went. “If you need a ride home tonight, let me know.”

And with that, Griffin was gone just as suddenly as he’d arrived, leaving Sal and Tatum alone in her kitchen. How very alone they were was deafening, and how very close they were standing was electric.

Tatum looked up at Sal and told him something she hadn’t told him in years. “Guess I’ll see you tonight.”

+

Tatum talked Ellie into going with her, and she also rejected Sal’s suggestion that they go together.

“For someone who avoids social interaction as much as humanly possible,” Ellie said from behind the wheel on their way to the Murray house, “you sure know how to have some juicy drama. I love it.”

“I hate it,” Tatum said, digging through the cassettes in her sister’s glove box. “If anyone ever wonders why I don’t do things, it’s because this is what happens when I walk out the door.”

“What, stay up all night talking with your secret high school sweetheart who you haven’t seen in six years but are still clearly 1000% still hung up on?” Ellie guessed. “If that happened to me every time I walked outside, I’d install a revolving door.”

Tatum smirked out her window. “That was funny. Stop it.”

“I most certainly won’t,” Ellie said, flipping the bird to a driver who tried to cut her off. Ellie was about as sweet as they come, except when she was driving, when she became a full-blown menace. “This is the first time in 22 years anyone has seen evidence that Tatum O’Malley has a heart. I’m milking this revelation for all it’s worth.”

“I don’t have a heart,” Tatum scoffed.

“You sure do, and it’s all over your little face.”

Tatum sighed. “I never should’ve told you about last night.”

“Oh, hush,” Ellie said. “Yes you should’ve, and you should’ve told me six years ago too. I like Sal.”

“Me too,” Tatum muttered, selecting Whigfield and popping it in the tape deck.

“What was that?” Ellie asked, grinning over at her little sister. “Did you say you love him?”

“I said eat my ass.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I heard you say you love him and want to have his babies.”

“No, I literally said I hate you and I want to stuff you out your window.”

“That’s so funny because it actually sounded like you said you love him and can’t wait to kiss him tonight.”

Tatum cracked a grin that only Ellie could get out of her, and cranked up the volume. “Saturday Night” blared through the speakers and neither sister could resist grooving to the beat, turning Ellie’s car into a traveling dance party. Out of the six O’Malley sisters, these two were the silliest and sweetest (even if Tatum would never admit to it), and when they were together, they both made the other shine. Yes, Tatum had a heart, and Ellie was its truest evidence.

When the song was over, Ellie turned the volume down and said, “Have fun tonight, okay?”

Tatum slouched in her seat. “If I kiss him, kill me.”

Ellie beamed. “No.”

“Useless.”

“ _But,”_ Ellie said, looking over at Tatum as she flipped her left turn signal on, “if he hurts you, I’ll kill _him.”_

Lord knew he already fucking had, but just like that, Tatum’s idiot little heart flipped a table and swept six years under the rug, as her first thought was _he would never._

“Looks like this is it,” Ellie said as they pulled up to a house where a dozen other cars were parked.

“Looks like,” Tatum said, taking a deep breath.

Ellie patted her hand. “Ready?”

“Yep,” Tatum said, until she saw Sal sitting on the front step laughing with his friends, and she smiled before she could stop herself.

This was going to end badly.


	6. how do you teach your heart it's a crime to fall in love again

Tatum stepped out of the car and stood on the sidewalk, regretting her decision to leave the safety of her empty apartment. Most of the people going in and out of the house were strangers to her, and the ones she did know she gave less of a fuck about now than she had in high school (probably because the feeling was still mutual). She shouldn’t be here.

“Come on,” Ellie said, walking around the car to stand next to Tatum. “Party time, excellent.”

“This is stupid,” Tatum said, turning to her sister like they were little again and she was scared to join the other kids on the playground. “Let’s just buy five-cent candies and go for a drive or something.”

“Next time,” Ellie said, taking Tatum’s hand. “Let’s go. Swish, swish, jellyfish.”

Tatum knew Ellie well enough to know she wouldn’t make fun of her for how tightly she held her hand, but she dropped it anyway and crossed her arms over her chest as she followed her up the driveway. She was nervous as hell -- all the more reason not to show softness. She’d rather people look at her and see a bitch than a kitten.

Ellie, who had never made an enemy in her entire life, smiled at everyone they passed, so by the time they reached the front door, the delighted look on her face upon seeing Sal and Q sitting on the stoop wasn’t terribly obvious. “Well hey there, fellas,” she said. “Long time no see.”

They smiled in tandem at her, cheering like her sudden presence was a winning goal. “Hey!” Q said happily. “Didn’t know you were coming!”

Ellie ruffled Tatum’s hair. “This little party animal talked me into it.”

Q smiled at Tatum, far cooler than Sal, who was looking everywhere except at her. “Well, well, well. Fancy meeting you here, Tatum.”

“Thanks for kidnapping our brother last night,” Tatum said, instead of something normal like hello.  

“Pretty sure he kidnapped me,” Q replied. “I don’t think I’ve been that hungover in my entire life.”

She gestured to the beer in his hand. “Glad to see you weren’t afraid to get back on the horse.”

“Nah, never,” he scoffed, taking a drink.

“Sounds like the party’s in full swing inside,” Ellie said. “What are you two doing loitering out here?”

“Sal’s the one loitering,” Q said. “I’m waiting for Mallory.” He nudged Sal pointedly.

Sal took the hint. “Hey.”

Tatum nodded. “Hey.”

“Sal here was just telling me about your wild and crazy night last night,” Q said, and then looked up at Ellie. “Did your sister tell you? Sounds like we missed a good time.”

“I heard,” Ellie smiled. “We’ll have to make up for it tonight.”

“There’s beers in the kitchen,” Q said, pointing vaguely behind him. “There’s punch too but Murr made it so I wouldn’t trust it.”

“I’m good, I’m driving,” Ellie said. “Gotta make sure her drunk ass gets home.”

Q looked between Sal and Tatum, the two most awkward people on the planet, and realized he was going to have to do all the work here. He nudged Sal again and held up his beer can. “I just popped this one -- why don’t you show Tatum where she can get a drink?”

“Sure,” Sal said, getting to his feet, using Q’s shoulder for leverage. “Come with me.”

Tatum pulled out a bottle of vodka from her purse. “I came prepared.”

Sal gave her a grossed-out look. “You need mix.”

Tatum looked at Ellie for help.

Ellie shrugged at her and smiled at Q. “I’ll wait out here with you, Brian.”

Q patted the spot next to him and Ellie sat down, both of them giving Sal and Tatum smug smirks. Sal and Tatum responded with matching eye rolls.

“Lead the way,” Tatum said.

So Sal did, not staying as close to her as she wanted him to as they walked into the crowded house. Her own annoyance annoyed her -- what did she want, for him to grab her hand and lift it above their heads and announce that they were walking into a room together? It wasn’t like she needed him to protect or pave the way for her; she’d never needed anyone to do that. Besides, she’d made it very clear to him that they were just going to be friends or nothing at all, so she didn’t know why she was pissed that she couldn’t reach out and touch him even she wanted to. She was ridiculous.

The kitchen was full of people, and Sal said hey to most of them as they walked in. “There’s soda and juice in here,” he said, opening the fridge like he owned the place. “And also the leftover Chinese food belongs to Murr so help yourself.”

Tatum smirked as she surveyed her drink options. “You and Murr are still enemies, I see.”

“Honestly, I hate him as much as I love him,” Sal said. “And that’s with my whole heart.”

She hated how he could always make her laugh even when she was determined to close herself off. “I haven’t seen him in years,” she said. “I should find him and say hi at some point.”

Sal nodded, resting his back against the kitchen counter, looking outrageously handsome in his black t-shirt. “See anything you want?”

Tatum snapped a startled look at him. “What?”

“For mix,” he said, gesturing towards the fridge. “Do you see something you want to mix your drink with?”

“Oh. Jesus.” She flushed furiously. “I don’t know. What goes with vodka? I usually just drink it hobo-style.”

“What, straight? Oh my God.” Sal gave her the most dubious look he could conjure and then huffily pushed away from the counter and walked up to the fridge. “Out of my way.”

Tatum put her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?”

“Making you a goddamn drink.”

She handed over her vodka and watched as he moved confidently around the kitchen he was obviously very familiar with, using shot glasses to pour this and that into a cocktail shaker. She bit her lip, wholly unimpressed with herself for not being able to tear her eyes off of his lithe hands as he shook up the drink and poured it into two glasses with expert ease, one for her and one for him.

“Here,” he said, handing one off to her.

“What is it?” she asked, sniffing it suspiciously.

“It’s called a kamikaze.”

“Well, that’s not fucking ominous.”

“Just try it.”

She did. “Oh God.” Her nose crinkled at its potency. “What the fuck.” She took another sip. “Delicious.”

Sal grinned proudly. “You like?”

Tatum took another sip. “You’re hired.”

“I would’ve garnished it with some lime but Murr doesn’t have any for us to steal.”

“It’s good like this,” she said. “I already feel the buzz looming.”

He clinked his glass against hers. “Cheers.” He smiled as she relished another taste. “I didn’t think you’d come tonight.”

“Me neither,” she said.

“Do you know many people here?”

She shook her head. “You, mostly.”

“And you still showed up?”

Tatum rolled her eyes. “Don’t read too much into that,” she said. “I told you I’d be here so I’m here. That’s all.”

“You say that like it’s no big deal,” he chuckled.

“It’s not.”

“No?” Sal smirked. “I mean, I don’t see you for six years and now you’re here because you said you’d be. To me, that’s a lot.”

Tatum had to tell herself to drink slower. Her being here wasn’t a lot. Her being anywhere had never meant much. She was the girl whose name no one could remember on their first try, the one whose mother called her last week because she’d mixed up her and her sister’s birthdays for the second year in a row. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since she was 19, and she’d dumped that asshole when he forgot to pick her up after she’d gotten her wisdom teeth out. She liked her own company, because she never let herself down, and she wasn’t about to believe a word the first boy who’d broken her heart said to her, no matter how kind his words were.

“Can I get a tour?” she asked.

Sal’s smile faded, but came back with a downcast shake of his head. “Yeah, sure,” he said, giving up. “Come on.”

Tatum followed him out of the packed kitchen, head down as she slipped her bottle of vodka back into her bag, and when she looked up she realized she’d lost him in the crowd. She stopped in her tracks, worried, and then saw that he’d come back, his hand outstretched to her.

“No,” she said, but when he shrugged and turned around and led the way away from there, all she could do was stare at his hands. And then his arms. And then his shoulders. And then she was grabbing his wrist so she didn’t lose him.

He glanced back at the touch but didn’t comment. She was glad.

The Murray house was twice the size of the one Tatum had grown up in, giving her mind ample amounts of time to fuck with her as Sal led her to every room. _Bathroom,_ he’d say, and against her will, she thought about pulling him in and locking the door behind them. _Stairs,_ he said, and she let go of his wrist as they climbed the steps but couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to go down on him on them. _Some bedrooms we can’t go into,_ he said as they roamed the halls upstairs, and she pictured him using those hands of his to break into one of them and push her up against the door. Shit.

A couple of guys she vaguely recognized stopped Sal to talk and laugh, and the worst thing of all popped into her head: what would it be like to stand at his side and belong there and have him introduce her as his? But then one of the guys looked at her and said _Hey, Erin, right?_ and Sal huffed and said _it's T_ _atum_ and she finished her drink to distract herself from thinking what her name would sound like on his lips whispered in her ear.

Son of a bitch.

“Thirsty?” Sal asked, eyebrows shooting up when he saw that her drink was gone.

“I liked it,” Tatum said, fumbling against him when someone passing them in the hallway bumped into her and sent her sprawling.  

Sal put a steadying hand on his shoulder until she caught her balance. “Do you want another drink?”

No. Absolutely not. “Yes,” she said.

“Cool.” He knocked his drink back and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Let’s go.”

They climbed down the stairs and circled back to the kitchen, where he got to work making a second round of kamikazes. She hopped up on the counter and watched him fix their drinks and tried not to imagine him walking up to her and fitting his hips between her legs. Fuck. Coming to this party was the dumbest idea she’d ever had.

“Look how rosy your cheeks are,” Sal said after he’d handed her a new drink and they’d clinked their glasses together.

“What?” Tatum yelled above the chatter and music and her stupid raging hormones. He was leaning against the counter beside her, too close.  

“Your face is all cute and rosy,” Sal shouted. “You’ve only had one drink. That’s gotta be a record.”

“Don’t look at me,” she grumbled.

“Can’t help it,” he smiled.

“Don’t flirt with me either.”

“You’d know if I was flirting with you, Freckles.”

“Oh, fuck off, Vulcano.”

He placed a hand over his heart. “Me?”

“Yeah, you,” she said. “I’m going to find my sister.”

He laughed. “Why?”

“Because I’ve had enough of you.”

“What the fuck did _I_ do?”

“You’re obnoxious.”

 _“You’re_ obnoxious,” he laughed. “I haven’t shown you the whole house yet.”

“Show it to me, then.”

Sal grinned at her. “You’re like a kitten.”

“I’m like a _what?”_

“You heard me,” he said. “You think you’re all big and tough but you’re constantly looking for a place to hide.”

Tatum squawked. “I most certainly am not _,_ go fuck yourself.” She reconsidered. “Maybe a kitten with _rabies.”_

Sal shrugged as if to say _don’t shoot the messenger._ “It explains why I’m slightly scared of you.”

She snorted. “You should be scared of me.”

“I am.”

“Good.”

“Ready for the rest of the tour?”

“Whatever.”

Sal put out a hand to help her hop down from the counter, laughing when she gave him a look of disgust designed to stop his heart (the joke was on her; it did the exact opposite). He walked away, not looking back to see if she was following (she was), and led the way downstairs, where there were even more people and the music was louder.

“Rumpus room,” Sal said, nodding a happy hello to someone across the room. “We spent a lot of time down here in high school because Murr always had the best video games.”

“Nerds,” Tatum said, but secretly thought that was cute.

“Speak of the devil,” Sal said, lighting up as James Murray bounded up out of nowhere to clobber him with a hug. He hugged him back while laughing, “Get the fuck off of me.”

“There you are,” Murr said, holding a pool cue in one hand and a vodka cranberry in the other. “I was starting to think you weren’t gonna make it out tonight.”

Tatum smiled. Did that mean he’d just been waiting outside before she got there? She frowned.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Sal said. “Do you remember Tatum O’Malley?”

Murr grinned at her. He had the kind of smile she couldn’t stop herself from returning. “I sure do,” he said, giving her a hug, unable to pick up on her _don’t touch me_ vibe like Sal and Q had. He winked at Sal. “Finally locked it down, hey?”

Tatum and Sal exchanged horrified looks. “What? Don’t be ridiculous,” Sal said, stuttering so gloriously Murr’s jaw dropped.

“We’re just friends,” Tatum explained.

 _“Barely,”_ Sal said.

Tatum scoffed a laugh. “Fuck you?”

“See?” Sal playfully slugged Murr on the shoulder. “You’re silly.”

“Right,” Murr said, crossing his arms over his chest as he took them in with great amusement. “Well, I give it an hour till you’re singing a different tune. Come with me!”

“I don’t know what he means by that,” Sal assured Tatum as they trailed along after him over to a pool table, where bright-eyed Joe Gatto was waiting.

“Holy shit, it’s the littlest O’Malley cat,” Joe exclaimed, pushing away from the table to hug her. “Aren’t you supposed to be like 12 years old?”

“No,” Tatum giggled, ignoring the weirded-out look Sal gave her at the sound of her giggle. Whatever. She liked Joe.

“Good to see you, kiddo,” Joe said. “What are you doing with this moron?”

“They’re just ‘friends,’” Murr said pointedly. “Anyway, wanna play some pool?”

“Uh, sure,” Sal said, looking at Tatum, who clearly was not down. “What, you don’t like pool?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never played.” She wasn’t keen on in embarrassing herself in front of anyone tonight. “You can play though. I’ll watch.”

“We need two people,” Joe said. “We’re playing teams.”

Murr winked at Sal. “I’m sure I could find you a friend.”

“He’s got a friend,” Tatum said, rising to Murr’s bait even faster than Sal usually did. “What are we playing for, bitches?”

Sal gaped at her and then demanded, “Do you even know _how_ to play pool?”

“Nope.” She picked up a pool stick, no clue how to use it. “I think I’ll enjoy watching you lose, though.”

“Losers have to be the winners’ beer wenches all night until someone pukes,” Murr said. “And since Joe doesn’t drink, I mean you’ll be _my_ wench all night.”

Sal sighed and looked at Tatum. “You’ll at least _try,_ won’t you?”

She gave him an innocent look. “I don’t even know what the object of the game is.”

“Jesus Christ.” He racked up the pool balls, and then looked back at her. “How about I give you some incentive to not suck?”

“Like what?”

“If we win, I’ll tell you a secret.”

Tatum studied his face. With a little less vodka in her system, she might have put up some walls and told him he had nothing to tell her that she’d be interested in. But these fucking kamikazes had dive bombed all her defenses.

Tatum looked at the pool cue in her hand. “Show me what to do with this stick.”

+

Meanwhile, Ellie was upstairs getting her heart broken.

Once Q’s fiance had arrived, she’d left them alone and gone inside the house, happy to see all the friendly faces. For Ellie, that was the best thing about holidays: you never know when you’re going to turn a corner and run into an old friend.

But heartbreakers come home for the holidays too, and that was the worst part.

It couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes, her polite exchange with the girl from Radioshack who’d shattered her heart the same summer that Sal and Tatum had shattered each other’s. But Ellie was a girl who let everything into her heart, good and bad, and five minutes was more than enough time to do a number on her. It wasn’t so much that Ellie was still in love with her; it was more just being reminded of what she’d let that heartbreak whittle her into all those years ago. She wanted to go home and eat ice cream and watch something with Sandra Bullock in it and forget all about tonight.

Ellie didn’t know where Tatum was -- she wasn’t in the kitchen and she wasn’t in the bathroom -- but it didn’t matter, because she didn’t want to cut her night short. No matter what Tatum said, the little monster had a crush on that sweet boy, and she deserved a night and a person that orbited around her for once. Ellie wasn’t the type to go to anyone for help anyway, especially not her only little sister.

So Ellie went outside and cried on the back porch. It was the end of November and freezing cold, so she knew she could be alone out here until it was time to see if Tatum was ready to go home.

+

“Easy, _easy --_ yeah, just like that--” Sal whispered in Tatum’s ear, and then pulled away in frustration. “Tatum, goddammit.”

Tatum rounded on him. “Well, maybe if you stopped whispering in my ear like a porn star I wouldn’t miss the fucking ball every time.”

“Let her try again,” Sal said to Murr and Joe, who shrugged their permission. Sal put the white ball back in place and sidled up behind Tatum again, putting his arms around her and positioning her properly. “That’s right, right there, yeah, good--”

“Can you stop that?” she asked.

“No. Can you hit a ball from three inches away?”

“Don’t provoke me. I have a stick.”

“A stick you can’t hold properly!”

Fed up, Tatum shooed him away and tried to sink the ball by herself. She held the cue all wrong and missed the ball she was going for by a mile, but managed to hit another one.

Sal stared at her as she celebrated. “You fucked up my shot.”

Mischief glinted in her eyes. “I’m gonna fuck up all your shots.”

“We’re on the same team!”

“Not anymore. I’m going rogue.”

“Time out,” Sal said, ready to tear out his hair. “I’m gonna go get more drinks. You stay here and practice.”

“Make mine a double so I can tolerate you,” she replied. They burst into grins at the same time, and just like that, the tension was gone and all they were left with was laughter. “I’ll get better, I promise.”

He smiled, finger-gunning at her before he dashed back up the stairs in search of more booze.

Joe and Murr immediately bookended her. _“So,”_ Joe said, throwing an arm around her shoulders while Murr rubbed his hands together like a villain.

“So what?” she demanded.

“You’ll at least give us a heads up before you start boning on top of the pool table, right?” Joe asked. “I mean, you’ll at least wait for us to win the game, won’t you?”

“Oh my God,” Tatum grumbled, rolling her eyes and shrugging him off. “You heard him, we’re barely friends.”

“Yes,” Murr admitted. “But we _also_ heard him back in the day when he never shut the hell up about you.”

Tatum blinked at him. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” Joe agreed. “It was all _Tatum said this_ and _Tatum did that_ and _did you know Tatum Tatum Tatum_ 24/7 with that guy.”

“We knew about all the treehouse rendezvous,” Murr said with a wink and a nudge so unnecessarily smarmy she had to laugh. “We knew when he disappeared from one of Griffin's parties, he was sneaking off to meet you. He insisted you were ‘just friends’ but we weren’t stupid.”

“We _were_ just friends,” Tatum said, tongue loose because of the vodka. “We only hooked up once.”

“Yeah, we never knew the sordid details,” Murr said. “Just that it ended really suddenly.”

“And now here you are again, a million years later,” Joe said. “Bickering like an old married couple.”

Murr smiled at her. “So that’s why we’re having a hard time believing this whole _just friends_ bullshit all over again.”

Tatum shrugged. “Well, believe it,” she said. “He and I would never work. We’d fight all the time.”

“Uh huh,” Joe said. “Murr, you want to put money on this?”

Tatum was about to protest but then Sal came back downstairs with their drinks, and her face turned to him like a sunflower reacting to light.

“Not a chance,” Murr laughed.  

+

Ellie could probably count on one hand the amount of times in her life she’d rather be left alone, and this, now, crying on the back porch of someone else’s house, was definitely one of those times. So when the balcony door slide open behind her, she cursed the company. Until she turned and saw who it was.

“Hey,” Q said. “I thought that was you.”

Ellie swiftly swiped a hand over her face but more tears fell, so she just smiled and looked away. “What are you doing out here?”

“Saw you,” he said. “Came out.”

“Why?”

“Well, because you’re sad.”

“Oh,” she chuckled. “I’m okay.”

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Shouldn’t you be with your fiance?”

“She left,” Q said. “None of her friends were here.”

“But you’re here.”

“I don’t think I’m really her friend,” he laughed softly. “Mind if I sit?”

“You don’t have to,” Ellie said, sliding over so he could sit next to her on the porch swing. “But I don’t mind.”

Q sat down, using his foot to gently rock them back and forth. “Boy problems?”

Ellie laughed, patting his knee. “Girl problems, honey.”

“Oh.” He looked impassive at first, then confused, and then fully understood. _“Ohh.”_

“I ran into someone I loved once upon a time,” Ellie said, gesturing behind her at the raucous party going on in the kitchen. She tried to sound cheerful as always but her voice cracked and gave her away. “And it just broke my heart, that’s all.”

Q took that in for a long moment, and then nodded. “It’s a pretty big heart,” he said. “I bet it takes awhile to heal.”

She smirked. “I guess it does.”

He looked at her, concern knitting his brow. “It’s her loss, by the way.”

“Thanks,” she smiled. “You don’t have to stay out here; the fun’s inside.”

“Nah.” Q waved a dismissive hand, seeming to be lost in troubled thoughts of his own. “Can I tell you something?”

“Me?”

“I can’t really tell anyone else,” he said. “I mean, I could, but I shouldn’t.”

“Okay,” Ellie said. “What is it?”

He gave her a sad smile. “I don’t think I should be getting married.”

She studied him and his kind, hopeless face, and made room in her broken heart for his. “Well,” she said, waiting until he was looking her in the eye before she finished her thought. “It would be her loss.”

He laughed, skeptical. “Yeah.”

“Do you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he said, and took a long swig from his beer. He pulled another one from his jacket pocket. “Want one?”

Her first reaction was to say no -- that’s what she always did. So much of her upbringing had been soaked in alcohol that she’d made sure she never developed a taste or desire for it. She always volunteered to be designated driver and she joked that it was her way of making sure she got invited to parties, but the truth was she didn’t want to find out she was like their dad, like Griffin had. And that was why she was 25 years old and had never been fully drunk in her entire life.

“Fuck yeah,” she said.

Q passed it over to her with a smile. “You O’Malleys,” he said.  “You’re all trouble.”

+

“Trick is not to hold it too tight.”

Tatum placed her left hand flat on the pool table, letting Sal move her fingers until they were in some kind of awkward position. “This feels funny,” she said.

“You’ll get used to it,” Sal assured her, not realizing she was half-referring to the fact that his body was stretched along hers over the table -- or maybe he did. “Okay, place the cue on your hand like so… and… no, your arm should at a 90 degree angle. Better. Perfect, actually. Good. Now just follow through.”

“Define _follow through,”_ Tatum said, feeling fuzzy from her fifth drink and having him so close.

“Um… here. I’ll…” Sal slid his hand from her elbow along her forearm, finally covering her wrist gently. “...I’ll show you.”

“Okay,” she murmured.

“Make little warm-up strokes,” he said softly, not having to raise his voice much above a whisper to contend with the noise in the basement because his lips were brushing her ear. “You wanna slide it in and out till you get the feel of it.”

“We’d better still be talking about pool.”

Sal laughed, his breath warm against the side of her face. “Shut up,” he chuckled, his voice like crushed velvet. “Just slide the cue up as close as you can get to the ball without touching it,” he told her, loosening his grip on her slightly so she could do it herself. Once she’d done as he’d instructed, he took hold of her again. “Good. Now you just let your arm glide, and don’t hesitate.”

Tatum did as she was told and when she managed to hit the ball she’d been aiming for, she spun around and high-fived him, thrilled to see the ecstatic look on his face. Their fingers interlaced for a second too long but they were too happy to dwell on it. Besides, they were both drunk and the lines they’d drawn felt like mere suggestions right now.

“Okay, relax, it’s not like you actually sank the ball, you bozos,” Joe said, somehow managing to be impatient and entertained and adoring all at the same time. “Murr, your turn.”

“Now, Tatum, watch and learn,” Murr said, brandishing his pool cue and moving around the table with swagger to line up his shot. “It’s all about the form. As you can see, I’m about to -- son of a bitch!”

“What?” Tatum demanded, looking around in confusion as Sal’s eyes widened in disbelief and utter joy and Joe squawked in rage and punched Murr in the shoulder. “What happened?”

“Murr’s a stupid ASSHOLE,” Joe said, trapping him in a headlock and giving him a noogie. “He sank the goddamn 8 ball.”

“Stop!” Murr cried, his voice rising an octave higher with laughter and indignation as he tried to fight Joe off. “I didn’t mean to!”

Tatum looked up at Sal for help.

“Sinking the 8 ball out of order is an automatic loss,” Sal explained.

“It is?” she asked. “You never told me that.”

“Of course not,” he said. “I knew if I told you not to do something, you’d do it for sure.”

“True,” she laughed. “So does that mean we win?”

He grinned. “Sure does.”

“Yay!” she cheered, slipping an arm around his waist and bringing him in for a hug. Startled, Sal’s arm was hesitant and gentle as it went across her shoulders and held her lightly against him, but it didn’t last long before she realized what she was doing and recoiled.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, insisted.

“I’d better go tell Ellie I won at pool,” Tatum said shakily, disentangling their arms. “She’ll never believe it.”

“I mean, we won by default,” Sal said, hand ghosting down her arm as she pulled away.

“Still counts,” she said, in a rush to get away but not quite able to leave.

His fingers closed softly around her wrists. “Celebrate with me first.”

Tatum stopped, her pinkie finger catching on his, locking together. Her eyes traveled up slowly from their hands to his chest to his chin to his lips to his eyes, every reason she had for leaving disappearing with every inch. “Okay,” she said, far weaker than she intended, but it was the best she could do with her knees turning to jelly.

Murr checked his watch. “Huh,” he said.

Joe took his eyes off of the awkward, earnest little trainwreck in front of them. “What?”

“47 minutes,” Murr said, pleased with himself. “That was even faster than I thought.”


	7. i never wanted anything, and i never got it

Their celebration didn’t last long before Joe did an impression of Murr that made Tatum laugh so hard she spilled half her drink down her front. This, of course, made Sal laugh so hard he fell to the floor, nearly taking Tatum out in the process.

“I love that you haven’t grown out of this,” Tatum laughed as he cackled at her feet. She stooped down to help him up, bracing herself with one hand on the pool table because she wasn’t particularly surefooted herself right now. “You’re like one of those fainting goats. Where’d my goddamn drink go?”

“Uh…” Back on his feet, Sal gestured vaguely to her wet chest and then ran his hand through his hair like some kind of awkward Danny Zuko. “There.”

“Ooops,” she giggled, wiping at her shirt clumsily. “Anyone got a napkin?”

Sal laughed at her futile efforts, and then slipped his arm through hers. “Let’s go find a bathroom.”

“Okay,” she said, a little too eagerly, causing both of them to break into new gales of laughter. They missed the smug looks of amusement that Joe and Murr gave them as they staggered away from the pool table, not interested in anyone but each other. Tatum let him lead her wherever he wanted, stumbling along after him as he looped around the basement and then upstairs when they discovered that bathroom was occupied. So was the one on the main floor, and the one on the top floor.

“I’m glad I don’t have to pee right now,” Tatum said. “I’d sure have to pee.”

“I know a secret,” Sal said, pulling her by the hand into a bedroom at the end of the hall. “In here.”

“Is this Murr’s room?” she asked, looking around at the posters and movie collection. “Is that a blankie?”

“Yes. It disgusts me.”

“Does he fuck it?”

Sal cackled, placing a hand on her back without comment as he directed her into Murr’s private bathroom. “Here you go.”

“He had his own bathroom growing up?” she demanded, facing herself in the mirror. “I’m so mad. Jesus Christ, did I spill my _entire_ drink on myself?”

“Most of it. Good thing I didn’t make you my famous honeydew martini,” Sal said, reaching past her to spin some toilet paper off the roll and hand it to her. “It’s bright green.”

Tatum snorted. “I’d look like a Ninja Turtle came all over my tits.”

Sal’s laugh was both shocked and delighted. “You could just tell people it was ectoplasm.”

“Isn’t that ghost jizz?” she asked, dabbing indelicately at the front of her t-shirt. “Not much better than turtle jizz.”

Sal dissolved into giggles, ducking his head so their foreheads were almost pressed together, and then lifted his head when he caught sight of her smiling at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I just missed you.”

He nearly hugged her. “I missed you too.”

“It’s not going to get much better than this,” she said, and his heart flipped, until he realized she was talking about the wet spot on her shirt. “Oh well. I’m sure I’ll spill on myself again soon.”

“I admire your optimism,” he smiled.

“Should we go back to the pool table?” she asked, stepping around him towards the door and reaching behind him to shut off the lights.

Sal wanted to stay right here, especially now that it was dark and just them. “Yeah, sure.”

She led the way out of the bathroom and back into Murr’s room, but to Sal’s surprise, didn’t go for the door. She went for the bed and sat down, testing it for bounciness, and then flopped backwards.

“Tatum, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not the pool table,” Sal said. “That’s a bed.”

“It just looked so comfy,” she groaned. “And now I can’t get up.”

“This is pathetic,” Sal laughed, leaning in the bathroom doorway. “Do you need help?”

Tatum’s arm shot up like a fucking zombie breaking out of its grave, and suddenly Sal was overcome with snickers.

“You’re a goddamn adorable mess right now,” Sal told her, going to her and reaching for her hand. He pulled her to her feet and her head whooshed with the sudden change in altitude and she lost her balance. She fell against him like a ragdoll, and Sal put his arms around her to catch her, and all of a sudden, they were accidentally hugging.

 _“You’re_ a goddamn adorable mess,” Tatum muttered against his chest. Her arms tightened around him. “Sal?”

“Yeah?” Sal urged.

“Maybe we should go outside instead?”

“Oh.”

“I’m a little hot,” she explained feebly.

Sal held her a little tighter; he didn’t know when he’d get another chance. “Me too,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She nodded against him. “Okay.”

They stood holding each other for another long moment, his hand between her shoulder blades, her arms locked behind his back, until Sal cleared his throat and said, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“I almost forgot about our deal,” he said. “I have to tell you my secret.”

Tatum pulled away, wrenching part of him with her, and studied him softly. “No you don’t.”

Sal watched her leave.

+

It was cold as fuck outside but the beer and the company helped keep Q and Ellie warm. He’d given her his jacket and he was shivering but he didn’t want to go in. Ellie was buzzed, not wasted, and she was emotional, not wrecked, and Q was just sitting here learning everything he could from her.

He’d known her for a decade but only on a surface level, certainly not well enough for either of them to love each other, and maybe that was why she was getting through to him tonight. Sal sat up and talked with him all the time -- too often, really -- but Sal loved him. He always had. When you have a brain that doesn’t want you to be happy, it’s hard to believe people who love you, because they’re the first ones your brain tries to turn you against. But Ellie had no reason to tell him kind things, but here she was, shivering on the back porch with him, not laughing at his fears or his dreams or any of the things he loved or hated.

“Listen,” Ellie said, both of them cracking up for no reason other than they were tipsy. She tipped his chin up like she would with her siblings. “Look at me.”

“I’m looking at you,” he laughed.

“Something has to change,” she told him. “You can’t do this forever.”

“No.”

“It doesn’t have to be shit,” she promised. “In fact, it won’t be. It won’t always be like this.”

Q looked down at his hands, his thumb flicking the tab on his beer can uncomfortably.

She took his face in her hands, both of them tearing up and laughing at the same time. “I said _listen.”_

“I’m listening,” he said softly.

“Someday you are going to fall so in love, sweet boy,” she told him. “Someday, you’re going to meet a good girl and she is going to love you so damn much. Everything’s going to light right up for you, I swear.”

He nodded. Somehow, he just believed her.

Ellie let go of him and he kissed her hand chastely to say thank you. He knew their paths probably wouldn’t cross much beyond tonight, and he wished he knew a way to make it so she’d walk away knowing every good thing about herself, not just tonight but every other night too.

“I hope the world is always nice to you,” Q told her. “I’ll kick its ass if it’s not.”

She smiled. “I appreciate that.”

Behind them, the patio door slid open and let out the pulsating cacophony of the party into the cold night air. Q and Ellie looked over their shoulders and watched Sal and Tatum giggle their way through the door and shut it behind them, trapping the noise inside, shushing each other giddily.

“Easy there, stumbles,” Sal snickered as he took Tatum’s arm to steady her.

They probably weren’t drunk enough to actually need to hold on to each other for support, but they did anyway. Q grinned. Tonight seemed to be going well.

“Holy shit,” Tatum yelped when she looked over and saw Q and Ellie on the porch swing, and then she whirled on Sal and smacked him in the arm when he noticed them and ducked behind her. “Did you just try to hide behind me?”

Sal gestured weakly at Ellie and Q. “I thought they were murderers.”

“So you _hid behind me?”_

“No one would murder _you,”_ Sal said. “Look how cute you are.”

To both Q and Ellie’s surprise, Tatum grinned and giggled. Apparently, tonight was going _very_ well.

“Wait a second,” Tatum said, her attention focusing back on Q and Ellie. “Why are you lurking in the shadows?”

“Your mom’s lurking in the shadows,” Ellie muttered, and then broke down into snickers of her own while Tatum stood and stared at her.

“Are you _drunk?”_

_“No.”_

Tatum burst into a grin and tripped across the porch to flop down next to her sister on the swing. “You are!”

Ellie turned away from Q and launched herself at Tatum, hugging her tightly. “I’m sorry!”

Tatum laughed and hugged her back. “For what?”

“I stole Elvira when we were little! And also I'm drunk.”

Q watched Tatum grin and exchange looks of confusion and affection with Sal before she turned back to Ellie. “Elvira?” she demanded.

“That stupid doll of yours that you liked more than me!” Ellie exclaimed, clutching Tatum sorrowfully. “I took her when you were sleeping.”

Q looked at Sal. “She named her doll Elvira?”

Sal shrugged. “Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.”

Tatum’s smile was slow but full of amusement. “I can’t believe that was you. What did you do with her?”

“I sold her for five dollars.”

Tatum laughed and pushed her sister away, then stole her drink and took a swig. “You’re cut off, you dick.”

Ellie sat back against the swing and heaved a sigh. “I also told Mom you had herpes.”

Tatum nearly snorted beer out her nose. “Like Mom would ever believe I had sex,” she laughed. “Why would you even bother?”

Ellie shook her head sadly. “You taped Unsolved Mysteries over Who’s the Boss.”

“I’d do it again,” Tatum scoffed. “How old was I?”

“Eleven.”

Tatum threw her head back to laugh. Q smiled when he saw the way Sal reacted to it. She’d hung the moon again.

“Q,” Tatum said, leaning around Ellie to give Q a playfully dirty look. “What’s with you and getting my siblings drunk?”

Q grimaced. “She’s only had like three and a half beers.”

“Well, that’s three more than I’ve ever seen her have,” Tatum said, not mad, but a touch concerned.  “So I have some questions about what kind of influence you are.”

Q shrugged. "I was trying to be a good friend."

Ellie’s bottom lip wobbled. “I saw Stephanie.”

Tatum looked at her. “Radioshack girl?”

Ellie nodded.

“Aw, balls,” Tatum said, putting an arm around her sister. “Do you want to go home?”

“Yeah, but--” Ellie trailed off, gesturing in Sal’s direction.

Tatum knocked Ellie’s hand out of the air and trapped it under hers, blushing furiously. “Don’t be an idiot. Griffin said he’d give us a ride home if we needed one. I’ll call him.”

“You’re having fun,” Ellie said, not asking, not accusing, just stating a fact.

Tatum glanced at Sal before she locked eyes with Ellie. “I mean, yeah,” she said with a shrug. “But I can’t have fun when you’re doing your lip-wibble thing. You’re breaking my heart here.”

“Okay, I’ll go,” Ellie said. “On one condition.”

“What?”

“You stay.”

Tatum rolled her eyes. “No. I came with you, I leave with you.”

Ellie turned to Q. “Talk some sense into her while I pee.”

“Okay,” Q said, ready to lend a hand as Ellie shuffled off the porch swing. “All good?”

“Yes,” Ellie said. “Boy, walking is weird when you’re drunk.”

“Wise words,” Tatum said, also getting to her feet. She didn’t quite look at Sal as she passed him, but she was talking to him when she said, “I’m going inside to call Griffin.”

Sal stayed where he was as the two sisters went back inside the house, leaving him and Q alone on the porch. He was a little shell-shocked, wearing a worried, nervous look that Q knew well.

“Hey,” Q called. “Having a good night?”

“Yeah,” Sal said, shaking out of it and plunking down beside Q. “Where’s Mallory?”

“She left.”

“Shitty.”

Q shrugged. “You should probably make sure Tatum doesn’t.”

Sal looked over at him. “You think?”

“Definitely,” Q said, patting his friend’s shoulder. “You’re lit right up.”

+

The cordless phone wasn’t in its cradle, so Tatum had to go on a hunt through the house for it. This proved to be very difficult, because a) she was drunk, b) everyone else was drunk, and c) her brain wouldn’t shut the hell up about Sal.

She wanted to stay. She’d never wanted to stay anywhere unless it was by herself. But as she moved through the house, she wished he was with her, cracking her up or making her mad. This was exactly what she hadn’t wanted. She should’ve known better.

Tatum made her way downstairs, where she found Murr talking to a girl he was clearly trying to impress. She interrupted to ask where the phone was, then went in the direction he pointed in, and found a guest room with a phone on the bedside table. She sat on the floor and dialled Griffin’s number.

One of his roommates answered on the sixth ring. “Hey.”

"Yeah, hi," she said. "Put my brother on."

There was shuffling on the other line as his roommate put the phone down and yelled, "O'Malley! Your sister's on the phone."

"Which one?" Griffin yelled back in the distance. 

"The mean one!"

Griffin picked up right away. "Hello?"

“I'm not mean,” she grumbled, sitting with her head propped up on one hand as the room spun around her.

Griffin laughed triumphantly. “You sound drunk as fuck.”

“I am drunk as fuck,” she snapped. “So is Ellie. Come pick us up.”

“Ellie? As in Ellie O’Malley, sober sister?”

“She ran into Stephanie,” Tatum explained. “She got sad.”

“Ah yes,” Griffin said. “First cut is the deepest, and all that.”

Tatum lifted her head. “Griffin?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

“No, that’s not--” Suddenly, Tatum was so angry with him she wanted to cry. “Why did you tell Sal to stay away from me?”

Silence on Griffin’s end. “I, uh -- I don’t--”

“Because it really broke my heart,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I know I was only 16, but I loved him like crazy, did you know that?”

“Not until later,” he said quietly.

“You don’t know all the terrible things I thought about myself,” she said, dissolving on the floor. “You think I ever want to be loved again? Sal loved me and then completely disappeared. I took that shit with me, Griff.”

“Tatum, I’m sorry -- we should probably talk about this when you’re sober, okay?”

“No, because you’re always drunk; it’s your turn to deal with me,” she snapped. “I just want to know why you did it.”

“Same reason Ellie made sure you were out of the house for parties,” he said. “Do you know why she did that?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

“Do you remember the party one of the older girls had at our place?” Griffin asked. “You were 12 and I was 13 and that asshole put his hands on you.”

Tatum hadn’t forgotten. There were many reasons she’d gone into criminology, and that memory was one of them. “I came and found you,” she said quietly.

“You came and found me,” he said, just as gentle. “I didn’t do anything about it and that ate me up for years. It still does.”

“You were a kid,” Tatum said. “What were you supposed to do?”

“Protect you,” he said. “I should’ve figured something out.”

“Griffy, come on.”

“I guess that’s why I panicked when someone told me they saw you and Sal together,” he said. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“Sal wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was your friend.” Tatum’s breath hitched in her aching throat. “He was _my_ friend.”

“I know, I fucked up. I’m sorry, Tatum, I’m really fucking sorry.”

Tatum dragged her arm across her face, a good weep locked up in her chest. “It’s okay,” she managed, keeping it together. “Just come get Ellie please.”

“What about you?”

“Not me,” she said. “I love you very much but I don’t want to see you right now.”

He took a moment. “Love you too, Tate. I really am sorry.”

“I know. Do you know how to find Murr’s house?”

“Yeah. I’ll be there in 20.”

“Drive safe,” Tatum said, muttered a goodbye, hung up the phone, and broke.

That was how Sal found her, sitting in the dark, phone on her lap, face in her hands, having a good cry. “No no no, what are you doing?” he asked, flailing with concern as he quickly crossed the room to stand over her. “Stop it, why are you crying?”

Tatum waved him away. “My tear ducts have a routine cleansing scheduled for every three years,” she said. “Tonight’s the night.”

Sal scooped up her hands and lifted her to her feet. “Please stop. You’re going to make me cry.”

“Why would _you_ cry?”

“Because _you_ are.”

Tatum couldn’t help smiling. He’d always teared up so easily. “Where’s Ellie?”

“She’s okay, Q’s waiting with her upstairs,” he said. “Are you staying?”

“I think so. I’m mad at Griffin.”

“Is that why you’re crying?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Sal smiled, opening his arms to wrap around her. “Someone’s got the drunken weepies, I see.”

She wriggled out of his hold. “Don’t.”

“I can’t hug you?”

“No.”

“You hugged me upstairs.”

“That was different.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t need you to.”

“...And now you do, so I can’t?”

“Yes.”

Sal laughed, baffled. “You’re giving me whiplash.”

“Listen, I’m drunk and I just need a minute, okay?” Tatum stepped around him. “I’ll come find you.”

“You need a minute?” Sal demanded. “Tatum, we’ve had six years.”

“Whose fault is that?” she shot back.

Sal’s jaw nearly dropped. “Really?” He took a step back, hands up. “You know what, don’t answer that. I’m not going to fight with you about this again.”

Finally. Something to rail against. She could take her heart and throw it into the ring and let someone else knock it around so she didn’t have to touch it. “Should I have hunted you down?” she demanded. “Should I have chased after you when you dropped off the face of the earth?”

“Yeah, maybe!” Sal stood his ground and lowered his voice, calm and restrained but biting and hurt. “I should have stood outside your window with a fucking boombox, Tatum. I should have done a million things, the very least of which was tell you I loved you, but I didn’t.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” she said.

Sal wasn’t done. “I fucked up, and I’m sorry, and I’ve said it, and I’m trying to fix it, and you’re standing here crying and I can’t even hug you because you won’t let me. I don’t know why you won’t, but I do know I can’t be your friend if you’re always going to hold this over me. I can’t do it.”

Tatum studied him, even though the only light they had came from the hallway and her eyes were too full of tears to see him all that well anyway. “Okay,” she said.

“Okay what?” he demanded. “Okay, you don’t want to be friends?”

“Sal, I don’t know,” she said, brushing her tears away with the back of her hand. “I don’t know.”

“Why do I scare you so much?”

She blinked, startled. “What?”

“I told you last night I couldn’t imagine you being scared of anything, but that’s not true, is it?” he asked. “You can’t get away from me fast enough.”

“Sal--”

“Maybe Griffin wasn’t totally wrong.”

“Griffin _was_ wrong,” Tatum said. “I told you, I need a minute, I’m _upset,_ could you just let me get my shit together for a second?”

“Yeah, sure,” Sal said, pointedly not touching her as he slipped past her and out the door. “Take as long as you need.”

“Thanks,” she muttered instead of _stay._

Out in the hall, he stopped, and she was so relieved she let out a tiny sob. He looked at her, hurt all over his face. He took a breath, bit his lip, and then shook his head.

“Never mind,” he said, and left her alone. Just the way she liked it.


	8. back when we were young and drunk, love could never last forever

Sal found himself upstairs in a daze, the house he knew like the back of his hand suddenly feeling foreign.. Every step felt like a mistake. Every corner he turned felt like a lost chance. Tatum wasn’t with him. 

His feet always took him to Q, but as soon as he found him and saw him saying goodbye to Ellie and Griffin at the front door, Sal wished he’d gone for Joe instead. Joe would give him advice or at least a ride home. But Q spotted him and waved him over and he had no choice but to say hello. 

“Sally,” Q said fondly, throwing an arm around his shoulder. “Go get Tatum, we’re doing shots.”

Ellie was experiencing some difficulties putting on her coat. “Who’s doing shots?” she asked. 

“Not you,” Q said, taking his arm back from Sal so he could give her a hand with her jacket. “You’re going home and drinking a bunch of water and going to sleep.”

“That sounds like fun too,” she said, patting Griffin on the arm now that she had her coat on. “Let’s go.”

Griffin looked at Sal, not quite meeting him in the eye, and Sal couldn’t help but wonder what he and Tatum had fought about on the phone before he’d found her. “Where’s Tatum?” Griffin asked. 

“Downstairs,” Sal said, and suddenly he was pissed off, but he didn’t know if it was at Griffin or Tatum or himself, just that he really was. 

“Is she okay?” Griffin asked. 

Ellie piped in cheerfully. “She’s happy tonight.”

“She’s a fucking mess,” Sal said. 

Griffin stared at him like he was an idiot. “Then why aren’t you with her?” he demanded. 

“She said she needed a minute,” Sal told him, his tone dripping with derision. “Whatever you said to her on the phone upset her. But I guess that’s just what you do, right?”

“Sal,” Q said, placing a calming hand on his friend’s arm. “Say goodnight and come get some water with me.”

“No, I want to talk to this asshole,” Sal said. “I want to know why he keeps fucking things up for her. He abandons her at bars and makes her cry at parties and he has the goddamn nerve to stand there and ask me why I’m not with her right now? Because you told me to stay the fuck away from her, you dick.”

Griffin shrugged, self-loathing, not nonchalant. “You’re not her keeper, you know,” he said. 

“Neither are you, apparently.”

Q’s hand on Sal’s arm tightened. “Go for a walk.” 

Sal pulled his arm out of Q’s grip, but did as he was told. He walked -- he just didn’t know where to go. Maybe he’d just walk through the kitchen and right out the back door and keep going.

He stopped before he got too far, taking a left down the hallway leading to the laundry room and garage, which was blessedly empty and free of people to talk to or smile at or bump into. He leaned against the wall and stood, one hand drawn across his body to hold onto his elbow as he looked up at the ceiling and worried. 

It wasn’t anybody’s fault but his that he’d let Griffin scare him away from Tatum. Would Q have let some drunken goofball keep him away from the girl he loved when he was 17? Fuck no. Even Murr would’ve put up more of a fight than he had. It was just that when Griffin told him she didn’t want to see him again, that was easier to believe than it was to believe she could ever love him like he loved her. Her hating him wasn’t as scary as her loving him. It was safer. 

And now, after six years of not loving anyone else, here she was, in the same house, crying in a room he’d left her in. And here  _ he  _ was, standing alone in a hallway, his brain racing instead of doing something about it. He should bring her a glass of water or tell her how he felt, how he’d always felt, how he still felt, or at the very least, scoop her up and hold her until she felt it too. No, that wasn’t true -- at the very least, he should be a friend to her, even if all he wanted to do was pick up where they’d left off in that treehouse. 

Fuck it. He didn’t care what she’d said; he needed to find her. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, counted to five, and mustered his courage. 

When he opened his eyes, Tatum was walking towards him. 

“Hey,” Sal said, startled, letting his arm drop to his side as he straightened up and braced himself. She was walking fast, too fast for him to come up with anything beyond  _ hey  _ and some stammering. 

“I said I needed a minute,” Tatum said. “I didn’t say I wanted to be alone.”

Her velocity shot warmth through him and he took a step forward, his hand reaching out for her before he could think twice about it. “You’re talking to me now?”

“No,” she said, knocking his hand out of the way with the backs of her wrists as she wrapped an arm around his neck and kissed him up against the wall. 

Their kiss was a collision as they pinballed off the wall and Sal rammed her up against the door to the laundry room, where he kissed her breathless. Fucking finally. They’d only had that one night together, but he still remembered exactly how to kiss her, exactly what it took to get her panting, exactly when to slip his tongue in her mouth and when to bite her lip and exactly where to put his hands. Touching her was muscle memory and he couldn’t believe he’d ever stopped. 

Tatum had never let him get away with anything, not when she was a kid, not when she was 16, not last night, and she wasn’t about to let Sal kiss her breathless without doing a little damage of her own. She seized Sal’s shirt collar with one hand, yanking him closer, while her other hand clawed through his hair. She dug her fingernails into the nape of his neck when Sal bit down on her bottom lip and rested his hands gently on her hips. Her sharpness was new, but how badly he wanted her sure fucking wasn’t. 

“Fuck,” she growled in his ear when his mouth moved to her neck, but then she sighed so sweetly all he could do was hold her face in his hands and kiss her lightly on the lips and hope for the best. 

But Tatum wasn’t interested in gentle, at least not in large doses, so she took that sweet little kiss and deepened it, their mouths moving in a slow frenzy that was so lethal Sal gasped when she ended it. “Come here,” he whispered, his voice full of gravel, and pulled her into the laundry room. 

“Jesus Christ,” she panted, letting him walk her backwards into the room, her eyes closed, relying on him to keep her safe. She didn’t stop kissing him even when she bumped into the washing machine, not even when he stumbled against her at the abrupt stop. 

Without a word, he lifted her on top of the washing machine. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, he wrapped his arms around her back, and he felt her spine arch into him as she kissed him with her fingers coming to a delicate stop on his jawline. He couldn’t talk anymore if he tried. 

She was so much different than he remembered her. Kissing her six years ago, she’d been nervous and naive and eager to please, the two of them huddled in the treehouse on a pile of pillows, comic books and empty beer cans scattered around them. Now she tasted like vodka and she was bossy and rough and as graceful as she was angry and he’d never been harder in his life. He knew she knew it. 

Suddenly her sweater was up and over her head and on the floor and he took that as permission to slip his hands under her flimsy tank top. She reached for his belt without breaking their kiss and he made a sound in his throat and pressed closer. 

Sal wasn’t what you’d call an exhibitionist, and normally the idea of getting in any way racy in a room without a lock would strike terror in his heart, but his worries were completely clouded in lust right now. To him, all that existed right now was the brush of her fingers against his stomach as she unbuttoned his jeans, and the way she sat in front of him, legs spread, her knees on either side of his hips, trusting and turned on and powerful. In any situation, Sal was the first person to say  _ wait what are we doing is this okay  _ but right now, kissing her, touching her, the only word in his mind was  _ yes. _

Until the laundry room door burst the fuck open and Sal blurted  _ no  _ and Tatum pulled her hands back with a  _ you’re fucking kidding me  _ as a drunken James Murray stumbled in with a dopey grin and his shirt off and balled up in his hand. 

“I’ll be right back, I’m just gonna--” Murr halted in his tracks when he finally noticed Sal and Tatum, and all three were silent for a long, terrible moment, before he broke into horrified, high-pitched laughter. “Holy shit, sorry!”

Beyond fucking flustered, Sal stammered unintelligibly, wishing he had something to throw at him while also wishing he had any right to be indignant, and wishing, most of all, that he didn’t have such a boner. “Goddammit, Murray!”

“I spilled on my shirt!” Murr protested, clutching his shirt to his bare chest. “I didn’t know you were in here!”

“Well, I’m mortified,” Tatum announced. 

“You son of a bitch,” Sal seethed. 

“Me?!” Murr shrilled. “This is  _ my _ laundry room you were about to fuck in!”

“No we weren’t,” Tatum snapped.  

“Yeah, grow up, Murr, you perv,” Sal scoffed, and then looked at Tatum. “We weren’t?”

Tatum rolled her eyes at him. “No.” She reconsidered. “I mean.” She shrugged. “Probably.”

Sal stooped to pick up her sweater and handed it to her, angling his pelvis away from both of them so they couldn’t see the state he was in. Clearly, it didn’t work, because he watched her eyes roam up his body and then arch an eyebrow at him. He smiled at her, the rest of the world falling away again. 

“Quit it!” Murr said, flailing at the sight of their suggestive eye contact. “God, get a room.” He threw his shirt into the laundry hamper, opened the dryer to find a clean one, and then threw a dirty look at them over his shoulder. “But not one of mine.”

Tatum smirked as she shrugged her sweater back on and Sal’s heart stopped as he watched her and looked at the pink marks he’d left on her skin. She wasn’t so untouchable, not really. 

“Hmm.” Murr pulled a blue shirt out of the dryer and compared it to the green one he was already holding. “Choices.”

“Murr, I swear to  _ God,”  _ Sal said.

“What?” Murr demanded. 

“What do you mean,  _ what?  _ I’m going to assassinate you.”

Tatum slid off the washing machine. “Come on.”

Sal would follow her anywhere. “Where are we going?”

She smirked up at him. “You tell me.”


	9. you made me feel again, made me dance circles around the pieces of your heart

All Tatum knew was that if she didn’t get Sal into a bedroom right now, she was going to lose it. She could regret it later, and she was sure she would, but for now, she was just thinking about his hands and hips and mouth and all the things she wanted him to do with them.

“Where?” she asked, hushed and terse as they rushed out of the laundry room and headed down the hallway.

Sal reached for her hand but she didn’t take it -- she wanted to drive him crazy (he liked it) -- and nodded to the right. “Downstairs.”

“The room we were in before?” she asked, walking two steps ahead of him.

“Yeah,” he said. “If someone else is fucking in it I’ll kill them.”

She shot a look back at him, mocking and tempting all at once. “You think we’re fucking tonight, Vulcano?”

“If we don’t, I’m gonna die, O’Malley.”

She smirked. “Same.”

“There you are,” Q said as they stepped out of the quiet hallway and back into the fray. He was drunker than the last time Sal had seen him, with a beer in his hand and looking like he was still very much in the need to keep partying. “I was looking all over for you.”

Sal smiled uncomfortably, hands in his pockets and adjusting himself in an attempt to hide his erection. “Here I am.”

“Hey, you found Tatum!” Q said, slinging an arm around both of them. “Come on, let’s do shots!”

“Oh, I -- uh, I hmm, no, I don’t think we should,” Sal babbled. “I’m plenty drunk. Shitfaced, even.”

 _“C’mon,”_ Brian cajoled jubilantly, leading them to the kitchen.

“Nah,” Sal said, trying to sound casual while being absolutely shitty at it.

“I’ll take one,” Tatum offered, because she figured it would sate Q and also because she didn’t want her buzz to wear off. “What are we doing?”

“Some horrible purple bullshit,” Q replied as he took them to kitchen counter where a bunch of untouched shots were already lined up.

“Are you sure this isn’t fucking cough syrup?” Tatum asked, picking one up and sniffing it dubiously.

“Not entirely,” he said. “Ready?”

“No,” she said, but knocked the shot back anyway. She swallowed and coughed, a hand over her mouth. “Regret, regret, regret, regret.”

Q downed his shot, swallowed, and looked unfazed. “Well, I don’t recommend that.”

Tatum looked over at Sal to see him smiling at both of them with affection all over his face. She dropped her gaze. It was easier to be near him when they were fighting or kissing -- she didn’t know how to be looked at like this. She didn’t know how to be seen. She didn’t know what to do and she didn’t like it.

Q was too drunk to pick up on the hum of tension between Sal and Tatum, so he just threw his arms over their shoulders like they were all having the same great time. “Tatum, you and your sister should come out more,” he said. “You’re both gems.”

Having Q’s arm pulling her in meant that he was bringing her too close to Sal. She shouldn’t have fucking kissed him. What the hell had she been thinking? Jesus Christ, she wanted to get him alone.

“Thanks,” she said, wishing she’d just left with Ellie. She wanted to be back in the safety of her solitude, not here with people who could hurt her.

“Ellie gave me a lot to think about,” Q said. “I don’t know, maybe tomorrow everything’ll go back to normal, but tonight she got through to me.”

Sal took his eyes off of Tatum’s hands and looked at Q. “She did?”

“She said it doesn’t have to be shit,” Q said. “Like it doesn’t have to feel bad all the time.”

“She’s right,” Sal told him. “It doesn’t.”

“She said I’ll fall in love and when she said that I didn’t think about Mallory at all,” Q went on. “I’ll probably feel bad tomorrow but right now I just feel kinda okay with that, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Sal said, looking so relieved that it nearly killed Tatum to see. “Yeah, I know what you mean. That’s good to hear, Q. I’ll remind you if you forget, okay?”

Q looked over at Tatum, dark eyes serious. “Do you know how great this guy is?”

Tatum slipped out from under Q’s arm and took a step back. “I do."

“You should hear how he talks about his mom,” Q said. “Oh, and one time we saw this dumb fucking kid drop his ice cream and I laughed because it was hilarious but Sal went over and bought him a new one. Goddamn, maybe I should just marry Sal instead.”

Tatum watched Sal grin over at Q, amused and adoring, like he saw every little bit of him and loved the messy as much as the lovely. If Sal ever looked at her that way, she didn’t know what she’d do. She imagined him getting her downstairs and getting her naked and looking at her like this, and she realized if that happened, she was done for. If she stayed here a minute more, looking at him look at his friend, seeing how fucking good he and his heart were, she was going to fall in love with him.

If she fucking hadn't already.

Again.

“I think that’s a great idea,” Tatum told Q, and then reached out to touch Sal’s arm before she could stop herself. “Sal?”

Sal looked at her, eyes soft and hopeful. She could crush him right now and she knew it. “Yeah?”

All she needed to do was say she had to go. She could lie and say that last shot had done her in. Or she’d left the stove on. Or she could just tell him the truth and tell him she’d been too hurt too young and she was proud of how strong she’d rebuilt herself and she was scared to find out she was still breakable after all. Or she could just say she had to go and leave it at that.

But before she could say anything, Murr joined their trio -- he’d gone with the green shirt -- and tossed back a horrible purple bullshit shot with pizzazz and finger-gunned at them. “That was fast,” he said smugly, ignoring Sal and Tatum’s angry looks as he recoiled in disgust at the taste. “Holy shit, was that a shot or antifreeze?”

“Up for debate,” Q said. “What was fast?”

Sal glared at Murr. “I’ll tell you what’s _not_ going to be fast.”

“My death?” Murr guessed.

“Bingo.”

“I’m just saying,” Murr said, unfazed by Sal’s death threat. “I’m surprised to see you two here. I thought you’d be busy elsewhere.”

Q’s eyes went wide, looking back and forth between everyone.

“You know what?” Sal said to Murr. “I hope that was antifreeze.”

“Wait a second,” Q said. “Was I just cockblocking you?”

“Jesus,” Tatum muttered, grabbing Sal by the hand and pulling him away from the kitchen.  

“Sorry about Murr,” Sal said, squeezing her hand tight as he kept pace with her. “He’s a real asshole.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tatum said, grasping onto the railing on her way down the stairs. She knew what it looked like as she led Sal by the hand down the hall to the guest room, and she knew people saw it and clocked it. Six years ago, she would have been over the moon at the idea of everyone seeing them together with their hearts on each other’s sleeves. Tonight, she didn’t care what anyone thought, except for Sal. She was going to let him down gently.

Once they were in the room, she reached for the light switch, but Sal put a hand over hers to stop her.

“I know it’s lame,” he said. “But could we keep the light off?”

“Sal,” she said, heart unstitching. That little question made her so sad she didn’t know what else to do besides say his name and wish he knew the glow she felt every time she heard it. She nodded and closed the door. “Okay.”

Sal moved to put his arms around her, and she didn’t want to stop him, didn’t want to reject him, so she turned her body and slipped her hand back in his so he couldn’t hold her, even though that was all she wanted. He was right here, moonlit, facing her, looking at her, reaching for her. She could just say fuck it tonight and deal with the aftermath tomorrow.

“Fuck it,” she whispered before his lips met hers. He was a better kisser now than he had been at 17, but he’d been good enough back then that she'd compared everyone she’d kissed over the last six years to him. And for the record, in all her travels, no one had measured up. There wasn't a single boy or girl who had compared to how sweet he was, or how full his lips were, or the way he took his time in a way that made you feel like you were the only thing in the world that existed to him. And maybe that was why he’d been so good at it -- because in his arms, kissing him, she mattered. 

Tatum couldn't remember the last time she'd felt that way. 

And she didn't remember moving her feet either, but suddenly they were on the bed and she was on top of him. She could feel him hard underneath her, and she let out a little moan when he started to roll his hips, grinding up against her core, not nearly as sweet or gentle as his kisses. Her hands itched to undo his jeans, but she laid her body flush against his and kissed him with her hands in his hair instead.

One minute, she told herself. You can have one minute with him and then you stop.

But it wasn’t like she could keep track of time like this, their denim-on-denim friction getting her wetter and him harder, making out like a couple of teenagers with their parents out of town. She didn’t know how much time had passed before they were both on their sides, his hand under her shirt and his knee between her legs, pressing in just the right spot with just the right amount of ebb-and-flow pressure that all of a sudden she realized he might get her to come before they even got their clothes off, and she wasn’t even supposed to fucking be here right now.

“Fuck,” she whispered, putting a hand on his thigh to push it away. “Sal.”

“Yeah?” he whispered back, eyes closed.

“I can't.”

Sal swiftly slipped his hand out from under her shirt and came to a rest on her hip. He looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

When Tatum had gone backpacking after high school, she’d woken up next to her fair share of strangers. She was shy and reserved but had no hang ups about sex, and she’d fucked her way across the country on her own terms without shame. She liked to be touched -- she just didn’t like to be seen.

“Me,” she said.

“That’s insane,” he said, smiling uncertainly at her. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect.”

Tatum flinched. “I’m not,” she said. “And I can’t do this with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she said.

He chuckled softly. “You’re giving me whiplash again.”

“Sorry,” she said, and to her absolute mortification, welled up with tears. She closed her eyes to hide them. “Sorry,” she said again, this time for the tears. “Sorry, Sal.”

“Stop, it’s okay,” he insisted, pushing her hair back from her face, his hands timid but his concern stronger. “What’s going on?”

She didn’t want him to look at her, but his hands were on her face and she couldn’t hide from him. “I have feelings for you."

“Yeah, I have feelings for you too,” he said. “Lots of them. All kinds.”

Tatum shook her head. “I told you I couldn't do this if I fell for you again."

“Yeah, I remember, because that was _last night,”_ Sal said. “It took 24 hours for us to go back to who we used to be. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“That we’re drunk and horny.”

“No,” he said. “We’re inevitable.”

Tatum's heart soared, but she quickly yanked it back down. "It doesn't matter," she said. "I meant what I said."

He dragged a hand over his face, trying to process this even though he didn’t want to. “So what are you saying right now?”

“If we have sex tonight, I don’t think I can see you again.”

Sal watched her. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, silently brushing one of her tears away with his thumb before he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. He turned his head to her. “Those are my options?”

Tatum lowered her gaze. “I think so.”

“I can either be your friend and never be with you like this again,” he said, “or be with you once and never see you again.”

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“That’s a shitty choice.”

“I know,” she said. “It's okay if it's an easy one.”

“It is,” he agreed. He laid there for a moment longer, and then sat up, swinging his legs over the bed. He sighed, his back to her, shoulders rounded dejectedly. “I guess we should call it a night, then.”

Tatum looked at him, surprised. “Really?”

He looked back, his eyes following her body with residual longing as she pulled herself into a sitting position. “I already know what it’s like to lose you and I’m not doing it again,” he said. “You were my friend longer than you were anything else. Until I fucked it up, anyway.”

“I know, but--”

“I didn’t sneak into the treehouse just because I was in love with you,” he told her. “I mean, it was that too, obviously, but more than anything, I just liked being around you. I liked being your friend. Six fucking years, Tatum. I missed you like hell.”

Tatum nodded. “That's how I missed you too.”

“I wouldn’t trade being friends with you for one night,” Sal said. “Not in a million years. Not again.”

She took a second, waiting for the urge to cry to pass, and then, with all her heart, told him, “Thank you.”

He gave her a sad, tight-lipped smile. “I can ask Joey to give you a ride home if you want.”

Tatum melted. “What do you want me to do?”

“Stay.”

“Stay?”

Sal shrugged. “I won’t touch you, I just don’t want you to go.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

"You'll stay?"

"Yeah," she said. "I don't want to go either."

Sal leaned across the bed and kissed her, taking her by surprise, his hand on the back of her head, his lips soft and certain. He pulled away, and she still couldn't breathe. "I just wanted one more."

Tatum's breath hitched in her chest as she touched her bottom lip and hated herself. "Me too."

“You wanna toss me a pillow?” he asked. “I’ll take the floor.”

Tatum felt sad. “You don’t have to do that; we can both sleep here.”

He smirked. “If we’re going to be friends, I’m going to need to draw some lines of my own,” he said. “I can’t sleep in that bed with you.”

Tatum wanted to take it all back, but instead she handed him a pillow. She watched him drop the pillow down and settle in on the floor. “Here,” she said softly, pulling the blanket off the bed and giving it to him. "Take this too."

“Thanks,” Sal said as he pulled the blanket over himself.

“Are you comfortable?”

“Yeah,” he lied.

“Are you sleepy?”

“Yeah,” he lied again.

“Is this okay?”

He reached up a hand and she reached down to take it. “Yes,” he said, and this time, he meant it.

They were both still wearing the clothes they’d worn tonight, and the floor was hard on Sal’s back, and Tatum needed a glass of water, but they were back. They were Sal and Tatum again, sneaking off to be alone together while the party raged on outside their door, outcasts of their own volition, hearts pounding in the dark like they used to, and that was all they needed.

Or at least that was what they told themselves as she squeezed his hand and he squeezed back.


	10. but no one needs to know right now

Tatum woke up to sunshine with a start, not sure where she was. Heart pounding, she let all the kamikazes and tears and kisses from last night add up and sink in and put her here in this bed that wasn’t hers. It was seven in the morning, and she was shivering without a blanket because it was on the floor with Sal, who was flat on his back, still fast asleep. 

He could sleep like the dead, she remembered that. Nevertheless, she was quiet as she crawled off the bed, stepped over him, picked up the cordless phone from its cradle, and slipped into the hallway to call her sister. 

When she came back, he was still softly snoring away, and she had to stamp down her smile as she crouched beside him. “Sal,” she whispered, laying her hand on his shoulder. She couldn’t stop her smile when he opened his eyes and looked at her. “Hey. Good morning.”

“Morning,” he croaked, wincing when he moved and found out how sore and hungover he was. “How’d you sleep?”

“Better than you, probably,” she said. “The bed’s all yours if you want.”

Sal blinked blearily as he tried to fully wake up. He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I just talked to Ellie and Griffin’s driving her over here so she can come get me and her car.”

“Okay,” he said, struggling into a sitting position. “If you help me up, I’ll wait for them with you.” 

Tatum got to her feet and put out her hands. They clasped onto each other by the wrists and she felt his pulse hum against hers as she pulled him up. Quickly letting go, she took a step back so they weren’t so face-to-face. “Ready?”

“Can I get a piggy back?”

She laughed. “Fuck off.” She walked out, trusting Sal to follow her. 

They crept through the slumbering house, smirking at each other at the sight of Mikey Mariano passed out on the pool table with a dick drawn on his face. She led him upstairs, grimacing at the inexplicably sticky railing, and then took a left towards the kitchen instead of a right towards the front door. “I need water,” she whispered to him. 

“Good idea,” he whispered back, stepping over a capsized beer bottle in the hall. 

Sal showed her where the Murray family kept their glasses, and then they silently downed tap water while the rest of the house slept their stupors off. Tatum looked around at the damage to keep herself from looking at him, and then nudged him gently to point at Murr sleeping with his head on Q’s shoulder on the couch in the living room. Sal smiled at them, and then at her. 

“Cute,” she whispered, placing her glass in the dishwasher, then took his and did the same before she wordlessly left the kitchen. Watching him look at his friends with such affection was a little too much for her to deal with this early in the morning. 

They snuck down the hall and slipped outside, where they sat down on the front step. The street was quiet and the sky was bright, and their knees weren’t quite touching but their shoulders were. 

“So,” he said. “Last night.”

“Yeah,” she chuckled.

Sal glanced over at her. “Are we cool? Are we not cool? What’s the status?”

Tatum glanced back. “We’re good.”

“Okay,” Sal said, but looked like he was chewing on something else that was bothering him. 

Tatum couldn’t blame him. “Say it,” she said. 

“Say what?”

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

He sighed, heavy-hearted. “I mean, listen, obviously I fucking like you.”

She smiled. She hid it by resting her cheek on her fist and facing away from him. “I fucking like you too,” she muttered.

“Can you look at me when you say that?”

“Nope.”

Sal sighed again. “I’m cool being friends with you,” he said. “I’m like over the moon about it, I swear. But I just need to know, like -- are we working towards something here?”

Tatum ran her finger along a crack in the cement. “What are you hoping for?”

“I hope we’re working towards something,” he said with a shrug. 

She lifted her eyes to the road, hoping she’d see Griffin’s car. Right now, she couldn’t remember any of her reasons and she wanted an exit. “We just hadn’t seen each other in forever and everything came rushing back really fast,” she said. “But when this weekend’s over, we both have real lives to go back to.”

“Sure,” Sal said. “That’s not an answer, though.”

She rolled her eyes, not at him, but at herself. She hated this. “I’m really busy with school,” she said. “And you work late hours and you’ve got all these friends and comedy on the side and maybe we won’t fit in each other’s lives after this weekend. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

“Yeah, I hear all that,” he said. “But it’s still not what I asked.”

She knew. She took her hand away from her face and looked at him, sturdy and steady, for just a moment. “I have high hopes too, Sal.”

Sal nodded, a little smile at the corner of his mouth. “Okay. Cool.”

She turned away. “But the odds are still stacked against us,” she said. “And I don’t take chances with my heart like I did when I was 16.” 

“That’s fine,” he said softly. “I won’t ask you to.”

Tatum smiled at him. His voice was so gentle and kind and the morning was so crisp and quiet that she wouldn’t mind if Griffin hit all the red lights on his way over here. 

“They’re your friends too,” Sal said out of the blue. 

“What?” 

“All those drunk assholes passed out on the other side of that door,” he said. “They’re your friends too.”

“No they’re not,” she said. “Most of them didn’t even know my name.”

“Well, who gives a fuck about them,” Sal scoffed. “The ones that mattered did.”

Tatum hadn’t had close friends in years. Most of her friends from high school had scattered and moved to California or started families. She hadn’t stayed in one place long enough while backpacking to get close to anyone, and she was a little too standoffish to have made friends in any of her classes yet. Her loneliness was self-imposed in some ways, but it had been such a long time since she’d tried to be anything else that she wasn’t sure where to start. She supposed this was as good a place as any.

“Thank you,” she said. “Maybe we can all hang out again sometime.”

“I’d like that,” Sal said.

“Me too.”

They were cracking up over Murr sinking the 8-ball when Griffin pulled up to the house in his beat-up old car. Tatum figured he’d drive off as soon as possible to avoid having to see her after their phone conversation last night, but to her surprise, when Ellie stepped out of the car, so did he. 

“Ugh,” Sal muttered, looking apprehensive. 

“What?” Tatum asked. 

“Oh, nothing,” he said unconvincingly. “I might’ve sassed your brother a little last night, no big deal.”

Tatum looked from him to Griffin, who was approaching with his head down in his hands in his pockets. “Join the club.”

“Morning, cuties,” Ellie chirped, heading up the sidewalk towards them. “Fun night?”

“No complaints,” Tatum said, keeping her voice even. “You hungover?”

“Not terribly, but I have enough of a headache that I think my dabbles in drinking are done,” Ellie replied. “How about you?”

“Less hungover than I probably deserve,” Tatum said. “I assume it’ll hit me in a couple of hours.”

“Nice,” Ellie said. “Thanksgiving, here comes Tatum.”

Tatum groaned. “Mom’s going to put me on potato duty again, isn’t she?”

“You could be on onion chopping duty like Colleen,” Ellie said. “Count your blessings.”

Tatum smirked. This might be the first Thanksgiving that she would do just that. 

“Ready to go?” Ellie asked. “I told Mom we’d pick up a couple of things on our way over and be home for 9.”

Tatum nodded, standing up and dusting off her jeans. “All right, well -- bye, Sal.”

He smiled up at her, glancing once at Griffin nervously, and then back at Tatum. “Bye, Tatum.” 

“I’ve got finals coming up but if you guys have another one of these shit shows, give me a call,” she said, trying to be as casual as possible. “This was fun.”

“Yeah, for sure,” he said, matching her tone. “We’ll kick Murr’s ass at pool again.”

She wanted to hug him, but she crossed her arms over her chest. “Good running into you again.”

His smile looked like it hurt, but he kept it up anyway. “You too.”

Tatum gave him a little wave and then joined Ellie’s side. They brushed past Griffin, who was still standing there looking like a knob. “You coming?” Tatum asked. 

Griffin jerked a thumb back at his car. His eyes were on the ground but he was talking to Sal as he said, “You need a ride home?”

Sal looked just as confused as Tatum felt. “Uh,” he said, looking at Tatum for help. “Are you going to murder me?”

“Nah.”

“Because you’ve threatened to in the past.”

Ellie tsked. “Griffin,” she scolded.

If Griffin had had a tail, it would have been between his legs. “I just kinda want to say sorry.”

Sal studied him, and then shrugged. “Me too.”

The O’Malley sisters watched as Sal got up and walked in tandem beside Griffin to his car. “Odd,” Ellie said. 

Tatum caught Sal’s eye as he slid into his seat. She smiled a tight-lipped goodbye and then turned to reach for the door handle on Ellie’s passenger side, only to stop when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Suddenly, Sal was hugging her. 

“In case he actually does murder me, I just wanted to say happy Thanksgiving,” Sal explained, releasing her, smiling warmly at her even though she’d frozen in his arms. Then he realized he probably looked like an idiot, so he hugged Ellie too. “God bless.”

The sisters watched him once more as he scampered back to Griffin’s car and got in. 

Ellie grinned, dumbfounded. “What the fuck,” she whispered.

Tatum frowned and crawled into the car. Her frown just deepened when Ellie hopped into the driver’s side and continued to grin at her. 

Ellie was practically vibrating with anticipation. “What just happened?”

Tatum stole a glance of Sal in the rearview mirror. “It’s a long story.”

+

Thanksgiving in the O’Malley house was a circus, but it was Tatum’s circus, and she loved it. This year wasn’t as nutty as usual, because one of her five sisters was spending Thanksgiving with her husband’s family in Hoboken, so that meant their 8,000 nightmare children weren’t running around getting everything covered in gravy for once. Other than when she nicked herself cutting potatoes and the fact that her mother had called her the wrong name every time she addressed her, by the time dinner was finally ready, Tatum’s mood was downright peachy. 

The table wasn’t big enough for the whole family, and hadn’t been since 1972 when the fourth O’Malley girl was born. Tatum’s mom and dad ate in the kitchen with her oldest sister and her youngest nieces and nephews, while everyone else ate in the living room in front of the TV. 

“Aw yeah,  _ It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,”  _ Griffin crowed, commander of the remote control, as he settled on channel 12. Tatum hadn’t had a chance to drill him about his talk with Sal that morning or to even bring up last night’s drunken phone call. But right now, as he balanced a plate piled sky-high with Thanksgiving dinner on one knee and a nephew on the other, she just decided to leave him alone and love him from afar. 

Not long after the movie started, the nieces and nephews had all fallen fast asleep in turkey comas, except for Maggie, the oldest at 6, who got up to go to the bathroom. As soon as she was out of earshot, Tatum’s sister Kerry smiled over at her.  

“Hey Tatum,” Kerry called from across the room. “I heard you went to a party at James Murray’s last night.”

Their other sister Beth squawked. “James Murray from Monsignor Farrell?”

“The very one,” Kerry confirmed. 

“You dick, you went without me?” Beth demanded. “You know I wanted to bone him back in the day.”

“What do you care?” Tatum demanded back. “You’re married.”

“So? I can still want to bone him.”

Griffin covered his nephew’s ears. “There are children in this room, ladies.”

“They’re fine, they’re sleeping,” Kerry said. 

“I also went, if anyone cares,” Ellie offered. “My night just wasn’t as dramatic as Tatum’s.”

“Oh please,” Tatum said. “You had three beers and cried.” She looked at Kerry, who was sitting on the couch looking like a cat who’d eaten a canary. “How the hell did you hear I went to his party last night?”

“My friend Sarah was there,” Erin replied. “She told me my sweet baby sister hooked up with Sal Vulcano.”

Ellie bit off a chunk of her dinner bun victoriously. “Fucking knew it.”

Beth squawked again. “Sal Vulcano?!” 

“Please yell his name louder so the neighbours can hear,” Tatum muttered. 

“Why, is that what you did last night?” Kerry asked, leering lecherously.

Tatum threw a pillow at her. 

Beth beamed at her, salivating over this juicy gossip. “Did you guys f-u-c-k?”

Griffin grimaced. “Again may I remind you there are children in this room?” 

“They’re  _ my _ children, and I’ll spell swear words around them while they sleep if I want to,” Beth scoffed at him. 

He scoffed back. “Okay, how about  _ I’m  _ in the room, and I don’t want to listen to my sisters talk about boning my friends?” 

“Nobody boned anybody,” Tatum snapped. “We’re just friends.”

Maggie walked back into the living room and sat down in front of the TV. “Aunt Tatum doesn’t have any friends,” she said. 

_ “Maggie,”  _ Beth scolded her daughter. 

Tatum blinked at the back of her niece’s head. “What?”

“That’s what Mom said,” Maggie told her, eyes fixed on the TV.

Beth looked at Tatum. “I didn’t say that.”

“Yes you did,” Maggie said. “You told Dad that Aunt Tatum doesn’t have any friends and she needs to get laid.”

Tatum snorted and rolled her eyes at Beth. “I get laid more than you do.”

Maggie turned around and looked at her mother. “What does get laid mean?”

Griffin shot his sisters a withering  _ told-you-so  _ look and then smiled pleasantly at Maggie. “It means to take a nap.”

“Griffin, don’t tell her that,” Beth said. “Now she’ll tell everyone during nap time at school that she’s going to get laid.”

“Well, have fun digging yourself out of this hole, you pack of monsters,” Tatum said, picking up her plate and getting to her feet. “I’m gonna go eat all the pumpkin pie.”

“Hey Tatum?” Beth called, giving her a sorry smile when she turned around. “I always liked Sal.”

“Okay byeee,” Tatum said, hurrying away and into the kitchen, where her parents and older sister Colleen sat with the babies, having a civilized meal. She made a beeline for the pie.

“What’s that look on your face?” her mom asked her, a grin spreading slowly. 

Tatum looked up, a knife in her hand. “What look?”

“You’re standing there slicing up pie with this big dumb smile on your face,” her mom said. “I haven’t seen that smile on you in years.”

Colleen grinned too. “Looks like someone’s in love.”

Tatum growled. “I’m gonna go eat in the treehouse.”

+

Tatum felt like an idiot when she heard a knock on the treehouse door because her heart jumped into her throat. It was so stupid. She and Sal had had a secret knock anyway, and that wasn’t it. He probably didn’t even remember it. Not that she’d been sitting here hoping he’d show up. 

“What?” she called, her mouth full of pie as she sat on her pile of pillows reading Archie comics by flashlight. 

Griffin poked his head through the hatch. “Figured you’d be in here,” he said. He nodded at the comic on her lap. “What’s Archie up to now?”

“No good.”

He smiled. “Wanna put it down and come back in the house to hang out with us?”

“No. You’re assholes.”

“Kerry and Beth feel bad,” he said. 

“Good.”

“Quit it,” he laughed. “You’re not actually mad. You’re just being stubborn.”

She smirked. He was right. “Whatever. I was thinking about going home soon so I guess I’ll come in to say goodbye.”

“Actually, Mom asked if we’d all stay the night,” Griffin said. “She never gets to have all of us under the same roof.”

“Weird,” Tatum said. “Okay.”

“Come in anyway,” he said. “The kids are in bed so we’re going to play Trivial Pursuit. You know how much you like being right.”

Tatum relented. That was true. “Okay, fine. But I get to be blue.”

Griffin smiled at her. “Already saved it for you,” he said. “So you’re coming?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

His grin turned mischievous as he descended the treehouse ladder. “Good, because Sal’s on the phone for you.”

“What?” She scowled at him as she struggled up off her pillow pile and ushered him down the ladder so she could follow him out. “Asshole.”

Griffin laughed, enjoying the sight of her scrambling down the ladder while trying to look like she wasn’t in a hurry. “Take the phone in the basement,” he said. “You’ll never hear the end of it if the girls find out you’re talking to him.”

She finally smiled at him. He was a mess and a troublemaker and a heartbreaking pain in her side, but he was also her best friend. “Thanks, Griffin.” 

“Sure,” he said, smiling back at her as they walked into the house through the back door. “Don’t talk too long; you’re on my team for Trivial Pursuit and I need you.”

“I’ll be quick,” she promised, taking his advice and going straight for the phone in the basement, where her dad was watching football. “Hey Dad,” she said, aching a little when she saw how lonely he looked and how happy he was to see her. “Mind if I take a call down here?”

“Go right ahead, sport,” he said, kind and sweet but distracted by his beer and the game. 

Tatum picked up the phone, covered the mouthpiece, and then hollered upstairs, “Got it!”

She waited until she heard the click of Griffin hanging up the upstairs phone, and then she cleared her throat nervously. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Sal said, sounding like he was smiling. “It’s Sal.”

She curled up in the threadbare armchair in the corner that she’d watched  _ Silence of the Lambs  _ in a million times as a kid. “I know. Hi Sal.”

“I hope it’s okay that I’m calling,” he said. “Griffin gave me your number.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Because I asked for it,” he laughed. 

“Oh,” she laughed back, stomach flipping. “Yeah, it’s okay. Did you guys have a good chat?”

“Yeah, we straightened some things out,” Sal replied. “How’d the potato peeling go?”

“Much less bloodshed than last year,” she said. “For now, anyway. We’re just about to play Trivial Pursuit and sometimes it gets ugly.”

Sal chuckled. “My money’s on you,” he said. “I’m actually just on my break at work so I won’t keep you -- I was just calling to see if you wanted to hang out tomorrow?”

The crowd went wild on the TV, and Tatum’s heart went with it. “I do,” she said. “But I can’t. My finals start next week and I need to study my ass off.”

“Oh, okay,” he said. “Another time then.”

“Maybe in the evening?” she asked. “We could watch a movie?”

“I have to work,” he said. “I’m not off till 2.”

“Do you always work that late?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” he said. 

“I’d go crazy.”

“I’ve got a routine going,” he said. “It usually takes me a couple of hours to wind down so I watch a movie and then go to bed when everyone else gets up to start their day.”

Tatum smiled. “Cute.”

He laughed. “Did you just call me cute?”

“Yeah, because you’re basically the world’s lamest vampire.”

“Yeah, well--” He sounded like he was about to get good and sassy, but cut himself off. “Shit, I gotta get back to work.”

“No worries,” she said. “I’m gonna go make my sisters cry over board games.”

“That’s the Tatum I remember,” he chuckled. “I guess I’ll see you around?”

“I’ll call you after my finals are over,” she said. “Is that okay?”

“Absolutely,” he said, and then stammered for a moment before he finally said, “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

Tatum grinned. “Shut the fuck up, Vulcano.”

Sal laughed. “Night, O’Malley.” 

She said goodnight and hung up, asked her dad if his team was winning, and then dashed upstairs to join the raucous game of Trivial Pursuit that she and Griffin were already losing. But by some miracle (and possibly with the help of some self-sabotage from her sisters, who felt bad for saying she had no friends), Team Tatum and Griffin managed to pull off a win in the end. Everyone went to bed, happy with each other. 

A couple of nieces had taken Tatum’s bed, so she bunked with Ellie, who insisted on cuddling up to her. For once, Tatum didn’t make a show of protesting. 

“Are you awake?” Ellie whispered, her head on Tatum’s shoulder. 

“No,” Tatum whispered back. 

“Can I ask you something?”

“Is it about Sal?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You guys really didn’t hook up?”

Tatum sighed. She hadn’t told Ellie about what happened last night because she was still trying to process it herself. She didn’t know why she’d kissed him and she didn’t know why she’d pushed him away and she didn’t know why they couldn’t be together or why she couldn’t stop wishing they could. Ellie had every good intention in the world, but Tatum wasn’t ready to talk about it. 

She stared up at the stars on their ceiling. “I kissed him.”

Ellie seemed to sense Tatum’s contemplative mood. She didn’t even smile; she just stayed gentle. “Did he kiss you back?”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re still just friends?”

Tatum nodded. 

Ellie patted her arm. She didn’t say anything more, good or bad, and Tatum was glad. She fell asleep, peaceful and warm and wrapped up in Ellie’s wishes. 

+

But in the morning, Tatum found out why her mother wanted them all to stay the night. 

Not one for giving or receiving comfort, she left not long after, refusing a ride from any of her siblings, and went back to her apartment. She kept herself busy and distracted, focusing on studying for her upcoming finals until after dinner time, when she pulled out a phone book and flipped to the Bars & Restaurants section. 

She picked up the phone and dialed the number she found in the Yellow Pages before she could think better of it, and was glad it was Sal who answered. 

“Hey, it’s Tatum,” she said. She pushed past his surprise and tried not to linger too long on the relief she felt just hearing his voice. 

“Tatum, hey,” he said. “What’s going on? Did you miss me?”

She rolled her eyes. “No.”

He laughed. “Then why are you calling me at work?”

“I would’ve called you at home but this is the only number I have for you.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I was just calling because I think I’m going to have to pull an all nighter tonight.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, like he knew better than to get his hopes up.

Tatum shook her head at herself and went for it. “Yeah, so I was thinking,” she said. “Maybe we could hang out when you’re done work after all?”


	11. i was there when you crashed and you burned and you let your guard down

Even though she insisted she could walk, Sal picked Tatum up on his way home from work. She filled the car with stories from Thanksgiving, not seeming to mind that he got her sisters mixed up or even that he kept glancing over at her trying to figure out why she was here. It was a quarter after two in the morning on a Monday night when he picked her up and he was pretty sure she had class tomorrow, and he couldn’t begin to guess what she wanted with him tonight. He’d follow her lead.

So when she suggested they find some 24-hour fast food, he flipped his signal on and took them to the McDonald’s drive-thru on Richmond. When she suggested they park somewhere and eat it, he drove them to a spot that had a nice view of Brooklyn. And when she yawned and said no when he asked if she wanted to go home, he brought her to his.

“Sorry for the mess,” he said as they walked into his basement suite and kicked off their shoes. By now, it was after three and he still didn’t know what she wanted.

Tatum smiled because she couldn’t see anything even remotely out of place. He’d always been particular, always looking for something to use as a coaster, straightening the stack of comics in her treehouse, and combing his hair just-so, but she’d never been inside his home before. It was very him. She felt calm here.

“You can sit wherever,” he said, a vibration of tension between them now that they were alone in the place where he slept. “Do you want a beer?”

Tatum thought about it for a moment, wondering if alcohol might help, but then shook her head. “No thanks,” she said, lingering in the kitchen with him instead of sitting in the living room. “It’ll probably just put me to sleep.”

Sal rested his arm on the fridge door as he peered inside, and then looked over at her. “I mean, that’s what most people do at this hour.”

She shrugged. “I figured if I’m going to pull an all-nighter and you’re going to be up too, we might as well hang out.”

“Sure,” he allowed.

She studied him. “Is it okay that I’m here?”

“Of course.”

“You seem weird.”

Sal smiled at her. “Oh, _I’m_ weird?”

Tatum leaned against the wall. “I had a shitty day.”

Sal let the fridge door shut. “You did?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t even really want to talk about it; I just didn’t want to be alone. And I knew you’d be up, so I thought it would be okay if--”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s okay. What happened?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “My parents are getting divorced,” she said. “I found out this morning.”

Sal winced. “That’s shitty, Tatum, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s stupid, honestly. I’m not a little kid.”

“What does that have to do with anything?" he asked. "You’re still allowed to be upset.”

She looked at him like she wanted to believe him but couldn't.

"A month before Christmas; that's so fucked," Sal said in disgust, and then grimaced. “Do you… want a hug?”

“No,” she lied.

"Are you sure?"

"I don't need one," she said. “It was a long time coming.”

“Yeah, sounds like,” he said. “Doesn’t make it feel less shitty.”

She shook her head. Finally, standing here in his tidy little kitchen, she let herself feel it. She’d probably regret it later, but right now, she was going to let the bullshit in. “I’m not upset because they’re splitting up,” she said. “I feel like an asshole.”

Sal stood a little closer, but didn’t touch. “Why?”

“I'm sad for my dad,” she said. “Last night he was watching football by himself like he always does and I should have hung out with him for awhile after I talked to you but I went and played board games instead. He’s always so lonely.”

“Do you like football?”

“No.”

“Then maybe he should’ve played board games with you guys,” Sal said. “Why should it be on you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess because nobody else steps up.”

“That’s what pisses me off -- you have this massive family, and you’re the youngest,” he told her. “I don’t get why everything is always your problem. I mean, does anyone ever protect you?”

“Yeah,” she said, throat hurting. “I guess that’s the other reason I feel really sad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Shit,” she laughed, cupping a hand over her mouth as her bottom lip wobbled. She shook her head with a curt _mm-mm_ when Sal took a step closer.

“Tatum,” Sal said with a helpless smile, holding open his hands as if to show he had nothing up his sleeve.

“No,” she said, composing herself. "I'm fine."

"All right," he said, but didn't believe her and it killed him. "What's the other reason?"

“My mom made Griffin tell me.”

“Your mom’s an asshole.”

She smirked but didn’t disagree. “He was so sorry, like it was his fault,” she said. “That’s all I’ve thought about today. I keep picturing him rehearsing how he was going to tell me, and then I think about how he stuttered. It’s been breaking my heart all day.”

Sal nodded, letting her get it out. She’d talk if he let her go. “Right.”

“I’m not upset that they’re splitting up -- they’re the idiots who had 7 kids despite the fact that they don’t even like each other,” she said. “I’m upset because Griffin and I are the last ones they ever give a shit about. They threw us to the wolves a long time ago.”

“I know,” Sal said. “I know they did.”

“Fuck,” she grumbled, catching a tear before it fell past the bridge of her nose. “If they’d cared, there wouldn’t have been all those parties when we were in high school. Goddammit. I just want to say one thing if I could just keep my shit together for a fucking second here.”

He laughed, not because he thought this was funny, but because he adored her. He knew better than to tell her that she didn’t need to keep her shit together, so he just said “Take your time.”

She raked her hair back and found her fire. “I’m fucking furious because if they’d looked after us instead of just letting us do it ourselves, Griffin wouldn’t have felt like he’d failed me so bad when we were kids,” she said. "Did he tell you about that when he drove you home yesterday?"

"Not really," Sal said, which was only half a life. Griffin had told him he was overprotective of Tatum because of something that happened to her when they were younger but didn't tell Sal what it was. Sal didn't know, but he wasn't stupid. He could imagine. 

Tatum looked relieved. “Well, if my parents had given a shit about us, what happened wouldn't have happened. And then Griffin wouldn’t have been so worried everyone was going to hurt me, including you of all fucking people. Maybe he wouldn’t have told you to stay away from me. Maybe we'd still be together.”

Sal shrugged, his body aching. “Maybe.”

“But that’s what happened, because nobody bothered with us,” Tatum said. “And then my mother has the nerve to tell him to break the news to me because it’ll be easiest for me to hear it from him? I’m so fucking angry, Sal.”

Sal watched her carefully as she spoke, taking in her fidgety hands and wild hair and rosy cheeks. He wanted to soothe her with the millions of things he was thinking about her. He wanted to tell her things about herself that were as soft and kind and ferocious as she was, and he wanted her to believe him. But he knew those hands and those tears and that trembling bottom lip, and he knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him.

“Do you want me to say anything right now?” he asked.

She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. “Talking helped, actually.”

Probably because she wasn’t used to being heard, he thought, but didn’t say. “Sure you don’t want that hug?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “But thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “My parents split up too, so I know how some of this goes.”

“I remember,” she said. “What’s Christmas like?”

“Really fun, actually,” he told her. “And hey, if you’re worried about the whole two-Christmas weirdness this year and you want to avoid it, you’re welcome to come see how the Vulcanos do it.”

Tatum smiled. “You’re the bee’s knees, Sal.”

Sal smiled back. “Well, thank you,” he said. “If I can’t hug you, can I make you some hot cocoa?”

Her smile faltered for a moment, but when it came back, it was a grin. She nodded, turning away so he couldn’t see the tears well up in her eyes (he did, but pretended he didn’t).

Sal walked over to her, and she unfolded her arms and stood up straight and looked up at him with such relief that he almost kissed her. Standing too close, feeling her body heat, he tentatively reached out a hand and then took it back and ran it through his hair as he nodded above her head. “The, uh, cocoa’s behind you.”

“Oh,” she whispered, stepping to the side so he could open the cupboard behind her. She walked away to stand by the opposite wall, chewing on her thumbnail.

“I was thinking about watching a movie,” Sal told her, voice shaking. “Do you need to get studying, or do you want to watch something with me?”

Tatum groaned. “If I have to read one more word about the criminal justice system I’m going to flip a table.”

Sal smiled. She was so much gentler than she gave herself credit for. “I’ll make the cocoa if you want to go pick a movie out?”

“Sure,” she said, seeming eager to leave the situation, and left him alone in the kitchen.

Sal put the kettle on to boil and waited, his hands gripping the counter while he leaned forward and caught his breath. Two nights ago, he was kissing her, his hands roaming her body while she undid his belt buckle with a deft roughness he couldn’t stop feeling, and now he’d watched her stand here, just out of reach, as she let her guard down. She’d picked him two nights ago, and she’d picked him tonight, and it meant everything to him to mean something to her again. He didn’t know how he was supposed to be her friend when his heart felt like this.

The kettle’s whistle shook him out of his thoughts, and he concentrated on fixing Tatum the best cup of cocoa she’d ever had. He brought two mugs out to the living room, where she was curled up in the corner of his couch, holding a DVD in her hand.

“No,” he said.

Tatum grinned. “No what?”

“I’m not watching that shit,” he told her. “Forget it.”

Her smile just grew. “Well, now I just want to watch it even more.”

“Too bad,” he laughed. “I’m putting my foot down, I'm not watching it.”

Tatum looked down at the cover, smiling at the cute little doll about to chop the head off a jack-in-the-box with some garden shears. “Why?”

“Because it’s a scary movie!”

“So?”

“I don’t like scary movies!”

“Then why do you own it?”

“Joe Gatto brought it as his gift for Shitty Christmas,” he said. “And then he rigged it so I’d get stuck with it.”

“What the fuck’s Shitty Christmas?”

“It’s like a Chinese gift exchange, except everyone has to bring the shittiest presents they can find,” he explained. “I actually always try to bring _fun_ shitty things because I’m not an asshole, but Joe's a monster and he always brings things to specifically target me.”

“That sounds amazing,” Tatum said. 

“Well, I’ll be sure to bring you to the next one,” Sal said with a roll of his eyes. “We’ll see how you like it when Joe preys upon your fears.”

Tatum laughed. “You just make it so easy, Sally.”

“I’m burning my fingers off here,” he grumped, holding out one of the mugs to her.

“Sorry, thank you,” she chuckled, taking it from him. “It’s really not that scary. It’s called _Child’s Play,_ for heaven’s sake.”

“Yeah because it’s about a doll that’s possessed by a fucking serial killer,” Sal squawked. “And then he goes around in his stupid little overalls, killing people.”

She scoffed. “Spoiler.”

Sal sighed heavily, one hand on his hip while he held his mug of cocoa in the other, like a sassy little teapot. “I hate horror movies, Tatum.”

Tatum gave him an innocent smile. “Well, maybe if you faced your fears, Joe wouldn’t be able to prey on them so easily.”

“You’re awful.”

She laughed. “I’m trying to do you a favour here.”

“No, you’re trying to give me a heart attack.”

“It’s exposure therapy,” she said. “It’ll be fun.”

“For _you.”_

“Exactly.”

Sal heaved a heavy sigh, set his cocoa down on a coaster, and held out his hand. When Tatum happily placed the DVD in it, he shuffled over, grumpily popped it in the machine, and returned to the couch. It was a loveseat, so sitting on the opposite side meant that he was still sitting right next to her, but he did his best not to touch her as he got comfortable and pressed play.

“Wait,” she whispered, getting off the couch to fetch her backpack. She rooted around and returned with a package of Twizzlers. “I brought a snack.”

He grinned over at her. “You didn’t even bring your textbooks, did you?”

She grinned back. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

If their hands brushed a little too often, Sal wasn’t sorry about it.

In all the time they’d spent side-by-side when they were younger, they’d never watched a movie together. He liked that she insisted on watching the trailers before the movie (she liked that he didn’t mind). He liked how she picked her feet up off the floor like she was scared something was going to grab them, and he liked how she reached for the licorice without taking her eyes off the screen. He could get used to this.

But then the actual movie started and distracted him from her. He watched the opening scene with disbelief.

“This is so fucking stupid,” he said as the lightning struck and the toy shop exploded.

Tatum rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t heckle the movie.”

“Watch me.”

“If you heckle the movie I’ll heckle your life.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

She picked up her mug, smiling coyly as she took a sip. “I can’t,” she said. “This is the best cup of cocoa I’ve ever had.”

Sal smiled. He hoped the movie never ended.

+

“Do you need me to check in your closet?”

“No. Fuck off.”

Tatum beamed. Sunrise was around the corner, and she was tired down to her bones, but she still had smiles for him and how fucking cute he was. “Are you saying that movie didn’t scare you?”

“Jump scares aren’t real scares,” Sal scoffed. “It’s just a human response to stimuli.”

“I don’t know how many humans react to stimuli by yelling at dolls to go fuck their mothers,” Tatum pointed out. “Or by throwing an entire pack of Twizzlers at the TV screen.”

He tried to look nonplussed. “Yeah, well, some do.”

Tatum smiled at him. “My favourite part was when you called Chucky a little bitch and then apologized, like he could hear you.”

Sal couldn’t help but smile back, knowing how ridiculous he was. “Just in case.”

“Actually, maybe my favourite part was when you got up and watched from behind the couch like a fucking gopher,” she said, laughing so hard she snorted and startled herself and laughed harder, then caught a glimpse of his unimpressed face and laughed so hard she couldn't make a sound. “Ugh, goddammit. I’m crying.”

Sal watched as she wiped tears of mirth with the heel of her hand. “Are you done?”

She snickered sleepily. “Almost.”

He shook his head and fought a grin. “First you make me watch a scary movie, and then you laugh at me.”

“I wish I could say I’m sorry,” she said. “But unfortunately I’m a dick.”

Sal finally laughed. “I like dicks.”

Tatum cackled.

“You know what I _mean,”_ he whined, smacking her shoulder. “God, you really are a dick.”

She grinned proudly, and then yawned. “On that note,” she said. “I should probably get going.”

Stomach sinking, Sal looked at his watch. “What time is it?” he asked. “Jesus, it’s almost six.”

“Yeah,” she said, getting to her feet and stretching. “I have class in five hours so I should probably sneak in some sleep before then.”

“It’ll take you like a half hour to get home,” Sal told her. “Just sleep here.”

“Oh,” Tatum said, looking a little cagey. “Thanks, but it’s okay. I'll get out of your hair -- you’re probably ready for bed yourself.”

“You’re not in my hair,” he scoffed. “And I had all that cocoa so I’m not tired yet. I'll stay up. You can sleep in my room.”

Tatum looked like she wanted to want to put up more of a fight, but she was too sleepy. “Okay,” she said hesitantly. “I just need a couple of hours."

"Sure."

"You really don’t mind?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he said. “I think I’m still awake enough for another movie.”

She bit her lip. “You're sure?”

Sal smiled. “Positive.” He stood up and gestured for her to follow him. “My room’s down here.”

He brought her to a bedroom at the end of the hall, which was as neat and tidy as the rest of his basement suite. The last time they’d been in a bedroom together, they’d wound up with her on top of him, kissing in the dark, and she kept her hands in her pockets now to keep from pulling him to her again. “Thanks, Sal,” she said, too tired and raw to say what for.

“Yeah, no problem,” he said as he squeezed past her into the room and went to the closet, where he pulled down a woolly blanket. “It gets a little cold in here so you might need this.”

Tatum hugged the blanket to her chest, not letting her hands brush his as she took it from him. “Thank you.”

Sal lingered by the door, not quite ready to go. He looked at her, sitting on the edge of his bed, and it felt weird to have her here in his room, on his bed, and for him to be leaving. “Do you want me to wake you up when my movie’s over?”

Tatum nodded. “That would be nice, thanks.”

He knew he should go now, but didn’t want to. He scrambled for something to say. “No problem,” he said. “Need anything else?”

“Don’t think so,” she said, and he couldn’t tell from the way she wouldn’t quite meet his eye if that meant she wanted him to leave or stay. She laughed softly. “This is the fourth night in a row that I haven’t slept in my own bed.”

Sal’s heart sped up. “Where did you sleep last night?” he asked.

“With Ellie,” Tatum said slowly, taken aback as she looked at him. “Where did you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling like an idiot.

She laughed. “Did you think I left Thanksgiving dinner with my family to go hook up with some other guy?”

“It was a knee-jerk reaction,” Sal said. “Sorry.”

He watched her as she looked away and over at his pillow like she wasn’t sure if she should lie down. When she looked back at him again, her expression was soft. “What’s going to happen when we date other people?”

Sal frowned. “Do we stay friends, you mean?”

“Yeah,” she said. _“Should_ we date other people?”

“I mean…” He shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know.”

She shrugged back. “Me neither.”

“I guess we should figure that out,” he said. “But maybe not after an all-nighter.”

Tatum smiled. “Nerves still a little frazzled from the scary movie, Sal?”

He rolled his eyes at her. “ _Yes._ Dick.” He laughed, but when she laughed back, he inched closer to the door so that he wouldn’t go to her instead. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He flipped the light off. “Door open or closed?”

“Open’s fine,” she said.

“My movie won’t keep you up?”

“Nah,” she said. “Honestly, hearing someone watch a movie in the next room is kind of a comforting sound to me.”

“Me too,” he smiled, and then let himself get one last look at her. “You’re okay?”

“I’m good.”

“Okay,” he said, his smile coming back, but this time bittersweet. “Night, Tatum.”

“Goodnight, Sal,” she said, with a smile that probably looked a lot like his.

When he slipped into the hall, Tatum eased her body down onto his bed. His pillow smelled like him. She stayed on top of the duvet and covered herself with the woolly blanket instead, not wanting to know what his sheets looked like because she didn't want to picture herself on them later. She rolled onto her side and tried not to imagine the girls who had been here before. She tried not to think about him using his long fingers or full lips on them, and she tried not to wonder what they’d done to be good enough to wind up here in his bed. She tried not to think of him alone, his hand closing around his cock like hers had once, and she tried not to wonder how fast or slow he’d jerk off if he was thinking about her. More than anything, she tried not to think about him beside her.

Two hours later, when _Dogma_ ended and Sal went to his room to wake Tatum up, he found her curled up on her side and hugging one of his pillows tight. He tried not to wonder if, maybe in her dreams, he was there next to her.


	12. until then we'll have to muddle through somehow

_December 1999_

 

“God, you weren’t kidding when you said you needed help,” Tatum said, hanging up her jacket and kicking off her snowy boots before she walked in. “Good thing I’m here.”

“Yeah, I need help, not your judgement,” Sal scoffed. “Pass me the tape.”

“You’re not ready for the tape,” she told him, sitting down on the floor next to him in his living room amid wrapping paper and ribbons. She took the horribly-wrapped present away from him. “This looks like a blind horse wrapped it.”

“Okay, then, you do better,” he said, doing his best not to notice how nice she looked in her green sweater. It was snowing out and her nose was pink from the cold and there were snowflakes melting in her hair. She was the prettiest Christmassy sight he’d ever seen.

When it came to doing better, Sal was pretty sure he couldn’t.

Tatum had survived her finals and Sal had survived not seeing her until after they were over. And somehow they both survived the weeks leading up to Christmas, despite all the nights they spent together. It was a little like how it used to be -- except now, instead of him sneaking into the treehouse during parties, it was him driving to her apartment after he was done work, or her bussing over to him on his nights off because she knew he didn’t sleep any better than she did. Either way, they always ended up together, just like they always had.

They were used to keeping their hands to themselves, so once they’d gotten over the sting of wasted years, they’d slipped back into their old ease. He made her laugh when she needed it, and she pushed his buttons the way he liked it. Q told Sal this was only going to end badly, and Ellie told Tatum she was playing with fire, but December was a hard month, and for now, this was how they were going to make it through.

“Watch and learn,” Tatum said, undoing his mess and smoothing out the wrapping paper. She placed the teapot he was giving his grandma in the centre, and then he watched her hands move, folding carefully and running her finger along the crease and placing tape on the ends. He didn’t listen to a fucking word she said.

Which was evident when he tried to apply her lesson to the next present and screwed it up immediately.

“You can be on ribbon duty,” Tatum laughed, taking pity on him and what a Christmas present wrapping disaster he was. She took over, working quickly with hands that had clearly done this a million times. “Even though you can’t wrap for shit, I’m impressed that you’ve already finished your Christmas shopping.”

“Thank you, I was on the ball this year,” he said. “Are you done yours?”

“No,” she said. “The Christmas spirit hasn’t really hit me yet.”

Sal looked at her as he pressed his finger down and she concentrated on tying the ribbon. Christmas was only a week away. “I guess that makes sense,” he said. “How’s everybody doing?”

“Oh fine,” Tatum replied, in that dismissive voice of hers that he’d come to worry about. “My parents are no different than they were before they broke the news, the older girls are spending Christmas with their in-laws, Ellie’s flitting around trying to make this the best one ever, and Griffin’s drunk.”

None of that surprised him. “And you?”

“Also fine,” she said. She set the present aside and reached for the next one. “Hanging out with you has helped.”

Sal smiled softly. “Well,” he said. “The offer still stands if you want to crash our Christmas. I asked my mom.”

“You asked your mom?” She smiled back, but didn’t look at him. “What did she say?”

“She said okay but you have to dress up like an elf.”

Tatum grinned. “What the fuck goes on during Christmas at the Vulcano’s?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Sounds kinda kinky.”

“It’s _not.”_

“Well then I’m not coming.”

“Your invitation is revoked,” Sal laughed, elbowing her. “Just kidding. She didn’t say that. She said you have to make the turkey.”

She laughed. “Hope you guys like food poisoning.”

Sal handed her the expensive whiskey he’d bought his dad and then watched her glide the scissors along the wrapping paper for a moment before he said, “She didn’t say any of that. She just said you’re more than welcome. My mom’s way cooler than me.”

She smirked, her gaze fixed on the present she was wrapping. “Thank you.”

When he couldn’t look at her hands any longer, he stood up. “Hey, we should be drinking. What can I get you?”

“I think I still have some Blue Moon in your fridge from the last time I was over,” she said. “I’ll just have one of those.”

He grinned at her. “You’re sure you don’t want me to make you a kamikaze for old time’s sake?”

“Not if you want me to make it to this party tonight on my own two legs.”  

Sal disappeared into the kitchen and grabbed two beers from the fridge. He could hear her working quietly, tearing off tape and folding down corners, and he was struck by how close Christmas felt with her here. It hadn’t occurred to him that this would happen to his heart when he’d called her this afternoon and asked if she wanted to stop by early to help him wrap his Christmas presents before they went to the party at Joe’s.

But then, he wasn’t surprised. He never saw it coming, but it happened all the time. He should've known better by now, that being alone with her knocked the wind right out of him, but there was something about her that made him want to keep aching. It was like a bruise he couldn't stop touching.

He rejoined her in the living room, taking a moment just to smile at the sight of her sitting cross-legged on the floor, hard at work and surrounded by red and green. He stepped over her spread of wrapping paper, passing her a beer in the process, and walked up to his stereo, his finger hovering over play.

“Do you mind if I put some Christmas music on?” he asked.

Tatum looked up, not stoked, but with the smirk of a good sport. “I don't.”

He pressed play, then hopped over the wrapping paper to sit back down next to her, and watched a little smile form on her lips as Bing Crosby promised he’d be home for Christmas. Then he realized this might be the worst song in the world for her to hear right now and panicked. “This song isn’t going to make you cry or anything, is it?”

Tatum snorted. “No. I don’t cry.” She smiled over at him when he gave her a dubious look. “Listen, just because I cried a million times over Thanksgiving doesn’t mean anything. That was a weird weekend.”

“I’ll give you that,” he said. “I like this song. No matter how old I get, whenever I hear this song, the old Christmases never feel far away.”

She smiled at him. “That’s a nice way to put it.”

They listened to it, both of them gentle and serene, talking softly about their favourite Christmases and their plans for New Years. Time flew by, and so did the beers, and Sal knew in the back of his mind that they should get going and head over to Joe’s, but he liked where they were, tipsy, sitting on the floor, knees touching, Bing crooning, safe and warm, together.

“Holy shit, it’s already nine,” Tatum said, looking up to take the piece of tape Sal was offering her. “I guess we should hurry up.”

“Yeah, probably. Things don’t usually get going until everyone’s good and drunk so we’ve still got a little time,” Sal said. “Are you excited for your first ever Shitty Christmas?”

“I’ve never been more excited for anything in my entire life,” she said. “I’m here to win.”

Sal grinned. “You can’t win Shitty Christmas.”

“You can’t,” she said. “But I will.”

He laughed. “What did you bring?”

“I’m not telling you,” she scoffed. “What did you bring?”

“Two can play this game,” he scoffed back. “Guess we’ll both be surprised.”

Tatum glanced over at him mischievously. “I hope you get mine.”

“Why, did you bring me Child’s Play 2?”

“No, obviously, because that’s not shitty.”

Her sass always made Sal smile. “That reminds me,” he said, setting his beer down on a coaster before he popped up to his feet again. He hurried down the hall to his room and came back with a little gift that was wrapped badly but with good intentions. “This is for you.”

Tatum lit up. “Really?”

Sal shrugged. “It’s probably stupid.”

She leveled him with a look. “Is it your copy of Child’s Play?”

He rolled his eyes with a smile. “No way, I’m keeping that.” He sat back down on the floor next to her. “It’s gone up in sentimental value.”

She took the present in her hands, looking down at it reverently. “Thanks, Sal.” She glanced up at him, a playful glint in her eyes. “I don’t know if it’ll beat the last Christmas present you got me, but thank you.”

Sal laughed, delighted and startled that she’d remember that. “What, the mixtape?”

“Yeah, I still have it,” she smiled. “You taped all the songs off the radio.”

He chuckled. “It took me months.” He ruffled a hand through his hair as he remembered making it all those years ago, and how nervous he’d been to give it to her. “I wanted you to have something so you’d know all the times I thought about you when you weren’t around.”

“I remember,” she said. “I listened to it all the time.”

“You did?”

She nodded with a smile. “Sometimes it was just the end of the song because you didn’t catch it in time,” she said. “To this day, whenever I hear ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ it always weirds me out to hear the beginning.”

“Well, to this day, ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ still reminds me of you.” He shrugged. “They all do.”

Tatum pursed her lips together. “There were some good songs.”

“There were,” he agreed. He wasn’t talking about music any more than she was.

She looked down at the present in her hands. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” she said.

He shrugged. “Yeah I did.”

She smiled. “Thank you.” She placed the present gently beside her, not ready to know what it was yet. “I’ll save it for Christmas morning.”

He smiled back and secretly hoped he would be there to see her open it.

She wrapped his youngest sister’s present in silence, the folding paper and _O Come All Ye Faithful_ the only sounds between them. He raised his beer bottle to his lips only to find that his hands were shaking, so he took a swift swig and then quickly dropped his hands to hide his nerves. Fuck.

“Can you pass me the ribbon?” Tatum asked.

Sal didn’t hear her. He was too busy thinking that the only way this moment could be cozier is if he was kissing her.

“The ribbon,” she said again, rolling her eyes when she saw he wasn’t paying attention. She lunged forward to grab the ribbon spool at the same time he did, and they knocked their heads together. They backed away from each other, both holding their foreheads in pain.

“Sorry,” Sal said, handing her the ribbon.

Tatum took it from him, annoyed. “Did you just head-butt me on purpose?”

“No,” he scoffed. “I was daydreaming.”

“I’m wrapping your presents and you’re daydreaming?”

“I’m cozy!”

Tatum laughed. “Only you could yell that with such indignance.”

He grinned. “Dick.”

“Are you going to put your finger here or what?”

Sal blinked at her. “Where?”

“On the present!” she exclaimed, her frustration amused. “Are you high? What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he insisted irritably, holding the ribbon down with his finger while she tied it into a pretty bow. “We should probably get going, hey?”

“Yeah, before you get any weirder,” Tatum chuckled. “My ass was falling asleep anyway.”

They got to their feet and put on their coats and boots, and when he pulled open the front door and let in the biting December wind, Sal turned back and looked at her.

Tatum froze. “What?” She patted her hair down. “Do I have tape in my hair or something?”

“No, you look good,” he told her, biting his lip to keep from wincing over the ache in his heart when she blushed. “I was just thinking it’s really cold, are you sure you don’t want to stay in?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “It’s not that cold, you wimp.”

He turned to head out the door, but hesitated again. “Do you want a hat?”

“No,” she laughed. “Vamanos, Vulcano.”

“All right, all right,” he said, stepped outside, locked the door behind him, and led her away from how warm they could have stayed.

+

Tatum couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard. If it wasn’t all the gloriously shitty presents or the way Joe Gatto turned hosting a Christmas party into a slapstick standup routine, then it was Sal’s soaring cackle next to her that had her in stitches. She loved tonight. It felt like Christmas.

“Nice half pack of Marlboros,” Sal grinned over at her after all the presents under the tree had been opened. Now came the chaos of bartering. “Wanna trade?”

Tatum grinned back. “I can’t smoke a cat calendar from 1997, so no.”

Sal sighed down at the gift he’d opened. A fluffy orange cat with an underbite and a bow on its head stared up at him from the front of the calendar. “I’m gonna go see if Q wants this,” he said. “Do you want to come with me?”

“I’ll come find you after I grab another drink,” Tatum said. “Do you want a refill?”

“God bless,” Sal said, handing her his red solo cup. “I think I saw him out on the balcony -- meet me out there?”

She nodded and stood up, pocketing the half-empty pack of smokes she’d unwrapped. “Good luck,” she said as she walked out of the living room towards the kitchen, and looked over her shoulder at him before she turned the corner, only to discover that he was watching her go. She broke into a tipsy smile and kept going.

Tatum waited her turn at the punch bowl sitting on the kitchen table, even though she was quite certain that this homemade toxic boozy fruit punch was strong enough to take off years from her life, and then took the ladle from the guy ahead of her. “Thanks,” she said, sloshing a little as she poured her drink.

“Need a hand?” the guy asked, noticing her trying to juggle two cups.

“Yeah, can you hold this one?” Tatum asked, handing one off to him while she reached for the ladle. “You might want to hold it over the bowl; this punch is really fucking with my fine motor skills.”

The guy laughed and did as she suggested. “You’re in my criminal law class, aren’t you?”

Tatum looked at him, vaguely recognizing the preppy haircut and valiant attempt at facial hair. “I think so, yeah. Small world.”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “How do you know Joe?”

“Mutual friend,” she replied. “You?”

“My buddy’s trying to set me up with his cousin,” he said. “It didn’t work.”

“Better luck next time.”

He watched her dunk the ladle to scoop up more punch, trying to chase down a pineapple chunk in the process. “You don’t make a peep in class,” he said, liking what he saw. “I would’ve said hey a lot sooner if I’d heard you talk.”

She wrinkled her nose, put off but intrigued. “Why?”

“Nothing sexier than a girl with a Staten Island accent,” he said. “I love the little melody thing you girls got going on.”

Tatum rolled her eyes. She filled Sal’s cup not quite to the brim, spilling a little on his hand, not entirely by accident. “Oops.”

He smiled as she took the cup back from him. “I’m Danny. And you are?”

“Not interested,” she replied, and decided maybe she should drink a glass of water, so she headed for the kitchen sink. The party was still in full-swing and she didn’t want to make an asshole of herself because of this stupid fucking punch -- she hadn’t even noticed how drunk she was until just now, when talking to that guy just made her want to be beside Sal. It was only going to get worse if she didn’t sober up a little, so she downed some water and took a couple deep breaths.

When she turned around to head to the living room, she found out that Q wasn’t on the balcony at all; he was reaching past her to grab some paper towel for the punch he’d spilled down his shirt. “Oh, hey,” she said, picking up on his stormy mood immediately. “Did Sal find you?”

Q shook his head, wiping at the bright pink stain on his green turtleneck. “No, where is he?”

“The balcony, I think,” she replied. “He wants to see if you’ll trade presents with him.”

Q balled up the paper towel and tossed it in the garbage. “He might change his mind when he finds out I got a can of Spam.”

“Oh, you got my present,” Tatum laughed. “You’re welcome.”

He cracked a smile, even if it wasn’t entirely genuine. “Nice one,” he said. “How’s your first Shitty Christmas going?”

“It’s been really fun,” she smiled. “You guys do this every year?”

“This is the fourth annual,” he said. “Every year gets a little bigger.”

She turned the cups in her hand to make sure she was drinking from right the cup, and then took a sip. “Well, I hope I can come again next year.”

Q didn’t comment. He noticed that the other cup in her hand had Sal’s name written in Sharpie on it. He didn’t comment on that either. “What did you get?”

“Six cigarettes,” she said. “I don’t usually smoke but I said I’d share with Sal when I got drunker and he was pretty stoked about that.”

Q frowned. “So what, are you guys a thing now?”

“No. We’re just friends.”

Q rolled his eyes and gave her a look of annoyed disbelief. “You’re not friends. Come on.”

“You come on," she said. "Sal and I are friends, that's it.”

“So you’re just fucking with his head?”

Tatum blinked at him. “I’m not fucking with him at all, Q.”

“I don’t get it,” he said, drunk enough to be too honest with her. “You like each other and spend all your goddamn time together, but he’s not allowed to touch you?”

“Maybe it’s not for you to get,” she said, feeling heat rise from her chest to her face. “Is that what he said to you?”

“Those aren’t the words he used but that’s how I understood it.”

She scoffed. “You two are attached at the hip but you’re not sleeping together,” she said. “How is that any different?”

“He’s not in love with me,” Q huffed back. “That’s how it’s different.”

“He’s not in love with me either,” she snapped.

“You wanna fucking bet?” he asked. “I know him.”

"You don't know me."

His expression softened a little. He recognized that note of self-loathing. “Not well," he said. "But well enough that I was rooting for you. That night at Murr's party? I was cheering you two on. I liked you.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “And now you don’t?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sal’s my number one, Tatum. And I think you’re gonna hurt him.”

“How?” she asked.

“What?”

“How am I going to hurt him?” she asked. “You know everything, so I’m sure you’ve got it all figured out. What am I going to do?”

“Are you serious?” Q nearly laughed. “I mean, even just seeing you with that guy at the punch bowl would make him feel like shit.”

Tatum laughed. “You think I was flirting with that asshole?”

“No,” he said. “I think you looked like a girl who wasn’t interested because she already has a boyfriend.”

“Give me a fucking break,” she said. “So the only reason a girl can have for not being interested in some douchebag is that she’s already taken?”

“That’s not what I said or what I meant and you know it.”

“I’ve got 10-mile high walls for everyone, Q. None of you are special.”

“Except Sal.”

Tatum shook her head. “Whatever,” she muttered. “Let’s just go find him.”

Q looked like he wanted to say something else but Tatum stopped him. “Listen, I hear you, okay?” she said, fed up with both of them. “I don’t want to see him hurt any more than you do, so fuck off.”

He put up a hand in surrender. “All right, glad to hear it.”

She squeezed past him, mindful of the drinks she was carrying, and went back to the living room, her head swimming from the punch and her blush. All she wanted to do was be next to Sal, which maybe proved Q’s point that they weren’t just friends, but she’d worry about that later. Right now, she just wanted to see him.

A wave of relief crashed over her at the sight of him on the crowded balcony in his red sweater with his unabashed laugh. And then she looked over and saw the girl who was getting that laugh out of him, and she stopped. Tatum didn’t know her, and she wasn’t sure if Sal did either, but she did know the lit-up look on the girl’s face. She knew the charmed one on Sal’s. Fuck.  

Q stood beside her, and knew what was going through her mind. He wasn’t an asshole; he felt bad for her. He went for the dig anyway. “Hey, maybe they’re just friends.”

Tatum shot him a lethal look before she stepped out onto the balcony.

She didn’t need Q to disapprove of her. She could do that just fine on her own.  


End file.
